RealtyTrac trims workforce

Flickr photo by respres.

In an attempt to return to profitability, foreclosure data site RealtyTrac has trimmed its workforce by nearly 30 employees and is moving away from some media partnerships that drove traffic to the site but were deemed "not profitable."

RealtyTrac Senior Vice President Rick Sharga confirmed a report on the blog VendorAlley.com that the layoffs took place last week, calling the move a "surgical workforce reduction" that leaves the company with about 100 employees.

The layoffs -- of about one-quarter of the company's workforce -- did not involve senior managers and took place on a selective basis across the company, Sharga told Inman News.

"We didn't just take 'X' percent across the board," Sharga said. The layoffs took place in underutilized areas of the business, or where the company had "deeper bench support" so as not to affect "anything mission critical," he said.

According to online metrics company Hitwise, RealtyTrac's vast database of foreclosed and bank-owned properties makes it one of the 20 most-visited real estate sites on the Web. But the site has steadily been losing market share in recent months, according to Hitwise's monthly traffic reports.

Hitwise estimates RealtyTrac was the 18th most-visited Web site in the real estate category in August, with 0.9 percent of all traffic in the category. That's down from a recent peak of 10th in November 2008, when the site captured 1.32 percent of traffic in the category.

According to Hitwise, RealtyTrac was the second most popular real estate site on the Internet for much of 2007, behind only Realtor.com.

Sharga said RealtyTrac has its own internal traffic numbers, but acknowledged traffic "is probably off its peak," which he attributed in part to a decline in home sales and in consumer credit-card spending. ...CONTINUED

All rights reserved. This content may not be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, in part or in whole, without written permission of Inman News. Use of this content without permission is a violation of federal copyright law.