ONLINE MORTGAGE SHOPPERS FIND VALUE IN HOME APPRAISAL TOOLS

By: Michael Perlman

January 18, 2007

With the current unpredictability of the real estate market, tools to help value proprieties are increasingly important to consumers. Addressing this, Zillow.com – the innovative real estate focused site that allows one to obtain a “Zestimate” of a residential property’s market value based on the company’s proprietary formula – recently unveiled a significant enhancement to its site that enables home owners and real estate agents to list homes for sale. Unlike other listing services, Zillow’s new offering is completely free, so its business model relies on advertisements to generate revenue. To better understand the value of advertising on Zillow, Compete compared the site to several of its competitors in terms of overall traffic, and traffic from in-market financial services shoppers.

Have Zillow’s site enhancements increased its attractiveness as a marketing vehicle to home loan providers? The enhancements have yet to drive significant traffic growth to Zillow. Unique visitors to Zillow.com have steadily declined from 2.3 million in May to 1.5 million in December, but most of that can be attributed to seasonal trends in the real estate market. When compared against leading competitors – housevalues.com, homegain.com, and realestate.com – it is evident that Zillow has quickly emerged as a major player in this market, as only homegain.com had more unique visitors in the month of December.

But who are these visitors to emerging real estate related websites? Are they truly seeking to purchase a property or are they merely examining the latest offerings available on the web? A Compete analysis reveals that 11% of total visitors to these sites during December also shopped for a home mortgage online. Overall, these sites present an attractive marketing opportunity to home loan providers, as mortgage prospects are over three times more likely to visit one of these sites than are average Internet surfers. By understanding what sites in-market shoppers use as part of their purchase process, financial services marketers can better target this valuable segment and maximize online marketing ROI.

MONTHLY METRICS: FINANCIAL SERVICES NOT ON THE GIFT LIST

Financial Services Indicators: Change From November 2006 to December 2006