Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Not as many folks were looking at homes during the month of September — at least not on Zillow. The Seattle-based online real estate company today released traffic numbers for September, noting that it attracted 82.8 million during the month. As good as that sounds, it was down from 86.2 million in August and 88.8 million in July, which are traditionally the peak home-buying months in the US.
On the bright side though, Zillow's traffic was up 42 percent year-over-year, exceeding last August's year-over-year growth rate of 35 percent.
Another positive was Zillow's stock price, which rose by half a percentage point to 110.52 in early trading on Tuesday. However, that's still 33 percent lower than its all-time high of 164.90 – a figure it reached last September following the announcement of its intention to buy online real estate rival Trulia.com in a $3.5 billion deal.
In fact, the stock price of both companies has slumped in recent days. Trulia's price has falled in 12 of the last 15 days, and was up less than one percent yesterday. It's likely this is a result of number 3 online real estate site Move.com's announcement that it's to be acquired by the media group News Corp., in a $950 million deal. News Corp says it plans to take Move.com to "the forefront of the burgeoning U.S. online real estate sector and significantly expand our digital presence.”
Move Inc., is also the company behind Realtor.com, the National Association of Realtor's official website, and represents over a million real estate professionals.
