Millions of Listings Oh My
Frontdoor.com, the upstart real estate search portal from media giant Scripps Network Interactive, continues to move forward. From their most recent press release:
Just six months after opening, FrontDoor.com, the real estate Web site powered by HGTV, continues to unlock home ownership information for users – now offering more than 3 million listings of homes for sale across the country.
So is 3 million the magic number?
Zillow’s Real Estate Search Results claim to have close to that (2,626,271 to be exact). REALTOR.com says you can “search over 3 million new, existing and rental properties”.
Young buck Roost.com has about half that… but then they’re only live in a handful of markets.
Roost.com now provides consumers access to homes for sale in 26 major markets, over 12,000 cities and nearly 1.5 million listings in total.
Nothing from Trulia on how many listings they have but I’m going to take a wild guess here and say that they have… oh I don’t know… approximately 3 million listings?
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Joel Burslem | Jul 18, 2008 | Reply
I'm going to break protocol and be the first to comment on my own post.
But I can't get that song out of my head now…
Jessica Swesey | Jul 18, 2008 | Reply
damnit! I am singing it now too… the magic number…. It is kind of warm and fuzzy.
Chad Huck | Jul 18, 2008 | Reply
I didnt play the video until I read the comments… dang it. Now it's in my head too! Thanks Joel! I'll be sure to get you back.
LuDoan | Jul 18, 2008 | Reply
How many listings are there total in the USA? I'm curios to see how much of the market does 3 million cover?
Kris Berg | Jul 18, 2008 | Reply
Stopped by via Twitter (which is tanking my productivity today), and I am now humming along with y'all!
planomatic | Jul 18, 2008 | Reply
Great video Joel. Interesting info as usual.
jgrapes | Jul 18, 2008 | Reply
With all the syndication going on, its most likely the same 3 million listing at each site.
Victor Lund WAV Group | Jul 19, 2008 | Reply
Wolfnet passed the 5 Million mark last month – painstakingly updating them all once a day and delivering them carefully to more than 100,000 agent and broker websites – clear of all expireds, duplicates, solds, and other messy data that most non-IDX sites display.
The real estate community should be promoting IDX over non-IDX sites to the consumer community, helping them to understand the differences.
Kudos to Threewide, with Listhub now installed in more than 100 markets, perhaps we will begin to see improvements on third party aggregation websites.
Kudos to Roost who only displays IDX listings!
Kudos to Cyberhomes for not taking re-syndicated listings from notoriously bad data sources like Homesandland, RealEstateBook and Homes.com.
Kudos to VAST for stopping their practice of resyndicating listings.
Kudos to the National Association of REALTORS Real Estate Standards Committee (RETS) for pulling the third party syndication sites to the table to create better data distribution standards
Overland Park Real Estate | Jul 20, 2008 | Reply
The only problem I see is that most of those 3 million listings on T, Z, FD are not accurately updated. I hate to say it but at least R.com's 3 millions have accurately updated status' adn information.
Derek Overbey | Jul 21, 2008 | Reply
Thanks for the shout out Joel!
At Roost.com, we’ve never really believed in talking up how many listings we have nationwide. We believe the consumer cares about whether a website has comprehensive and up-to-date/accurate (equally important!) listings in the market they’re interested in. When the consumer has an accurate snapshot of what is available in the market, they’re a better potential client for a REALTOR®.
This is why we created our network of broker IDX sites here at Roost. IDX is certainly the best standard for consumers to have the confidence they’re seeing accurate and comprehensive listings in any given market. We clearly continue to add to our geographic footprint every day (currently ~30% of the country), but our number one priority is the quality of the data in the local markets we cover.
That song is going to kill my productivity today!
Derek Overbey
Sr. Director of Partnership Strategy
Roost.com
http://www.roost.com
http://blog.roost.com
john | Jul 21, 2008 | Reply
what about views, contacts, monthly visitors??
FloridaMoves | Jul 21, 2008 | Reply
Joel,
Interesting post. I enjoy your insights on real estate marketing. For a candid look at what it is like in the real world of real estate PR and Communication Management, check out my post on the local chapter of the Florida PR Association here in Sarasota. FYI – The job described below is posted on Monster, but this will give you a deeper understanding of the day to day. I have accepted the Dir. of PR and Brand Communication for C21 based in NJ and I will continue to follow your posts.
Enjoy a “Day in the Life” http://cwcfprablog.typepad.com/weblog/2008/07/l...
Best Regards,
Matt Gentile – 300 Days of Sunshine
http://www.floridamoves.com
Adam | Jul 21, 2008 | Reply
I'm not sure how much the # of listings correlates with value for users or advertisers. As an agent, I want a site that can deliver leads and awareness. As a buyer I want a site that can help me find the best property for me. They are plenty of niche sites/services that thrive without having millions of listings, and there are many of sites with millions of listings that don't provide much value.
shell smith | Jul 21, 2008 | Reply
What a funny connection between all those sights. I guess 3 million must be the magic number. I wonder if that large of a listing is hard to keep accurate? I have been using the site called PropertyMaps – they are linked to the mls directory, so I'm SURE they have 3 million too!
Hawaii_Real_Estate | Jul 21, 2008 | Reply
3 million just doesn't sound like enough MLS listings. My guess would be that it's higher. How many listings do you think the RE/MAX site has?
LuDoan | Jul 22, 2008 | Reply
It looks like everyone's pulling out their rulers to measure their database sizes. I think we can all agree that everyone's got big databases! A big database is only one side of the search equation. Now it comes down to who can leverage their big databases.
Who (what site/organization/etc) do you think has the best tools (interface, user experience, search result accuracy, etc) to service the consumer? WIth multiple sites having millions of listings, which site would you use and why?
bnix | Jul 26, 2008 | Reply
I don't think consumers care about tools on a real estate website. All they really care about is finding the property that best matches their criteria and feels like home. All the bells and whistles in the world will never create the feeling of 'i want to live in this home'. Therefore, in my opinion, the site that delivers the buyer into an actual house the fastest will be the site that wins. Getting lost with tools, will never satisfy what the buyers are really searching for…a home!
James Bridges | Jul 29, 2008 | Reply
Some great comments here on this post. I don't tend to see volume of listings as necessarily an indication of validity of a website. I agree that really consumers want to see listings that ar accurate and up to date.
I think the comment regarding real estate professionals pushing IDX is the way to go. Using a product like Wolfnet you can separate yourself from the listing aggregators by focusing on local area information and then providing the local MLS that is up to the minute up to date. That way you can get your “un-fair”
share of the market.
Joel | Jul 30, 2008 | Reply
We have about 2.6 as well.
Joel Burslem | Jul 31, 2008 | Reply
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/trulia.com+rea...