HomeScape Becomes HomeFinder
I’m slowly catching up from beneath a mountain of interesting news that was announced over the last week.
One such item is that HomeScape has rebranded itself as HomeFinder.com – presumably to respark some enthusiasm for a brand that, for all intents and purposes, has been off most people’s radar for the last few years.
HomeFinder.com is a product of Classified Ventures, the online conglomerate owned by media titans Belo, Gannett, McClatchy, Tribune and The Washington Post. Classified Ventures also owns resurgent HomeGain which, with the help of an orange ape, has successfully clawed back some mindshare from the big Web 2.0 ventures over the last several months.
HomeScape flew under the radar for a while since it was largely in the business of powering real estate website for newspapers, which included the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, Newsday and The Arizona Republic.
But with the rebrand to HomeFinder.com I suspect it means the company intends to double-down and focus on building out the portal as a legitimate destination for consumer traffic. Indeed, with the help of their media parents’ reach, they could make a serious run at the top 10.
The fact that real estate brands’ ad dollars are now seriously starting to chasing online destinations (see Century 21 Ditches TV for Online) no doubt helped seal that decision.
According to company sources, HomeFinder.com has over 3 million listings, pulled from a mix of MLS sources and broker feeds. They have over 2 million unique visitors a month — and, of that traffic, much of it is truely unique: 71% of consumers visiting HomeFinder do not visit Realtor.com and 84% of visitors do not visit Trulia.
Nevertheless, the new site is pretty generic; the design is inoffensive, but frankly pretty bland. Compared to Frontdoor (another Big Media play in this space) it lacks a certain splash of personality. However, that said, technically it’s quite competent.
What I’d love to see though is for these big media guys to take a long hard look of some of the innovators that are really pushing the envelope when it comes to search design (Estately for example) and see if there wasn’t a way to marry that technology with their marketing muscle. That would make for a truely interesting relaunch.
Bonnie Erickson | Jan 14, 2009 | Reply
Because the name is so similar to that of Lenn Harley’s (HomeFinders.com), the queen of copyright protection, it will be interesting to see if she reacts to this change.
Julia Miller | Jan 14, 2009 | Reply
I agree – Estately’s layout is much more sleek, simple, sophisticated. It’s all about simplicity these days.
Doug Breaker - HomeFinder.com | Jan 14, 2009 | Reply
Thanks for the mention Joel, we appreciate it.
I am curious, what other innovators do you see out there that are on the leading edge of Search, besides Estately? And, what about their search makes it more valuable to people looking for homes?
Tim Fagan | Jan 14, 2009 | Reply
Hi Joel –
Thanks for the mention of our name change and for your observations.
You’re right, reasons for the name change do include an aggressive effort to capture more national traffic to drive to our existing 15,000 advertisers. As we’ve seen in the other Classified Ventures businesses (cars.com, Apartments.com and HomeGain), we think a strong national online brand supported by local sales and promotion (provided by our papers in their markets) is a strong recipe for success for both consumers and advertisers alike. I just wish we had done this change a while ago….
So you think the site is bland but competent, eh? I guess I’ve heard worse, but thanks for highlighting where we can improve
Look for more product development from us in 2009!
All the best,
Tim Fagan
President, CV Real Estate
http://www.HomeFinder.com
http://www.HomeGain.com
Raj C. | Jan 15, 2009 | Reply
Hey Joel,
I think you’re dead on in your assessment that the media elite would benefit by taking a page from the likes of Estately and Roost. I think a lot of what you end up seeing on the big sites is that since their business models rely heavily on advertising dollars, you get a distracted visual hierarchy that takes emphasis away from what brought them there in the first place. As always, thanks for the info and keep up the good work.
Raj C.
Social Media Guru
http://www.neighborcity.com
http://www.realestatespace.com
Joseph Bridges | Jan 15, 2009 | Reply
Joel,
Great information as always. The site is very much non offensive and I get it with the national brand and the appeal that they are making that Tim mentions in comparison to the other ventures that their sister company owns.
Their site to me doesn’t do anything that is differen than others or out there in a sense.
I mean what is the compelling reason for the consumer or the agents for that matter.
On the “agents\brokers” page they have some text that frankfully is hard to read but not bad content wise.
With everyone competing for ad dollars and eyeballs you like to see someone step out and really push it to the max, kind of a go big or go home type thing.
We shall see. Would love to interview Tim though and have him speak a little bit more about the site and things.
Louis Cammarosano | Jan 17, 2009 | Reply
Hi Joel
Thanks for the HomeGain mention. Our “little orange ape” is actually a gorilla and his name is Max.
You can follow Max the HomeGain Gorilla here:http://blog.homegain.com/category/max/
Louis Cammarosano
General Manager, HomeGain
Tim Fagan | Jan 21, 2009 | Reply
Joel –
Give me a call at your convenience. 312-601-5822
Thanks
Laguna Niguel Real Estate | Feb 1, 2009 | Reply
The thing I like the most about Homefinder is its Mobile feature and MLSNI…. one of the coolest real estate navigators!
Thom | Feb 16, 2009 | Reply
They lost the Washington Post. THEY ARE DONE!