Move Inc.’s Move.com jumped in position from 17th in December to 9th in March in market share of visits to real estate sites, metrics company Hitwise reported today.
And Move Inc.’s Realtor.com site continues its reign as the leader among real estate sites, recording an 8.71 percent market share among real estate sites in March. The statistics are based on a sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.
ForeclosureStore.com, which maintains a database of foreclosure properties, improved from 31st in market share in December to 18th in March.
The top-10 sites for market share in March, in order, were: Realtor.com, RealtyTrac.com, Homegain.com, Rent.com, RE/MAX Real Estate (www.remax.com), Yahoo Real Estate (http://realestate.yahoo.com), Zillow.com, Apartments.com, Move.com and ZipRealty.com. The top eight sites on the list were unchanged since February, while Move.com and ZipRealty.com swapped places since February.
A total of 29.2 percent of all visits to the real estate category in March went to these top-10 sites, Hitwise reported, with 41.7 percent of the visits for the top-20 sites and 70.2 percent for the top-100 real estate Web sites.
Visitors spent an average 10.5 minutes at real estate sites in March, down from 10.9 minutes in February.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Web site, at HUD.gov, has been on the decline — that site dropped from 13th in December to 20th in March. ForRent.com dropped from 14th in February to 19th in March. MSN Real Estate, at http://realestate.msn.com, had dropped from 10th in December to 17th in February but improved to 11th in market share in March.
New to the top-20 list was VisualTour.com, a company based in Pompano Beach, Fla., that creates software and back-end services for real estate professionals to build their own virtual tours. Sites that joined the Hitwise top-100 list in March include: eHBSR.com (95th), RealtyUSA.com (96th), Frontier.Cincinnati.com (97th), i-RealEstateAgents.com (98th) and RealEstateShows.com (100th).
Sites that dropped off the top-100 list in March include BidSelect.net (125th), House-Real-Estate.com (166th), MCBREO.com (102nd), FMLS.com (107th), DRHorton.com (109th) and LVARMLS.RAPMLS.com (108th).
The top real estate-related search term in March was Realtor.com, which accounted for 1.64 percent of all search terms that directed Web users to real estate sites. Next on the list was “remax,” followed by “apartments,” “real estate,” “homes for sale,” “century 21,” “coldwell banker,” “apartments for rent,” “zillow,” and “remax.com.”
Hitwise identified several “Fast Movers” in the real estate category, which are sites that have experienced substantial rank increases for the past four months ending in March. HomeRealtyWA.com moved up 509 places during that period, followed by HouseValueFinder.com (289 places), ResortQuestRE.com (184 places) and HomeServices.com (166 places).
Other fast-moving real estate sites include MadRate.com, AllianceRE.net, Homethinking.com, LandsofAmerica.com, AgentEvaluator.com and RentJillsHouse.com.
