HouseValues (SOLD), the 10 year-old lead generation company, shed it’s skin this morning and repositioned itself as a marketing and technology solutions company.

The new company is going to be called Market Leader and brings together a number of HouseValues’ recent acquisitions, including RealtyGenerator web site and CRM tool, under a new roof. They also have a minority stake in ActiveRain (see ActiveRain secures $2.75 million from HouseValues).

Along with the rebranding, they also launched two new products; Growth Leader, aimed at helping real estate agents manage their online advertising spending and Team Leader, which will help agents manage their teams.

Market Leader will trade on the NASDAQ until the symbol LEDR and will be featured in the closing-bell ceremony on November 24.

More coverage:

• HouseValues rebrands as Market Leader

market leader, housevalues, real estate marketing

Share on Facebook

Housevalues lost $1.3 million in the 2nd quarter of 2008, the company reported in a press release last week. John Cook also reported that they lost over 400 customers in the same period.

But don’t shed a tear for HV – they’re still sitting on $62.7 million in cash. And that’s a bucket of cash that they’ve been willing to swing around a bit recently.

The press release highlighted RealtyGenerator, a company HouseValues acquired in November of last year. RealtyGenerator is a pretty slick product that functions as a lead generation and CRM tool for brokers and agents.

Personally, I was more curious in seeing what HouseValues had to say about its other investment – the $2.75 million they plunked down in January into ActiveRain.

Took a while for me to find any mention, but I did manage to dig this out of their Letter to Shareholders from the 2007 Annual Report (PDF link).

While the acquisition of Realty Generator will go a long way toward enhancing our products, we believe our investment in ActiveRain will help us broaden our sales reach. ActiveRain is a leading community and social networking platform for real estate professionals. The company has attained a high level of user engagement and has rapidly grown to more than 80,000 members. While ActiveRain will continue to operate as a completely independent business, our strategic relationship creates the potential for a new and rapidly growing channel.

Clearly Housevalues is excited about their new properties. I’m not sure investors were similarly moved however, as the stock price (SOLD) has remained relatively static.

Share on Facebook

Paul Kedrosky on why HouseValues’ investment in ActiveRain is the Worst Timed Investment Ever:

Worst: Real estate is in the tank and likely to stay there for some time. Venture capitalists are atrocious market timers, and this is, if anything, a sign things are going to get worse. Further, building a social network for real estate agents is like building one for residents of a rapidly southward-drifting ice flow.

Agree or disagree?

[poll=7]

Further, if $2.75 million buys a minority stake in ActiveRain, any guesses to the total valuation of the company?

Share on Facebook

ActiveRain, the popular social network/blogging platform for real estate professionals, announced today it has received $2.75 million in funding (see the official post on their site).

In a move that may raise some eyebrows, the money came from fellow Seattle venture HouseValues.com in exchange for a minority stake in the company.

I had a chance to talk to ActiveRain’s founders Jon Washburn and Matt Heaton earlier however, and both are pretty excited about the cash infusion. As they put it, they’ve been “bootstrapping” ActiveRain for the last couple of years and the new dollars mean they can finally begin to focus on building their team to really ramp up development on the site. They plan on using the bulk of the money to hire new engineers.

First priority for them is to launch the outside blogging platform (see ActiveRain Launches Outside Blogs) and finish an overhaul on Localism, their consumer facing local market commentary site.

More importantly, Washburn and Heaton see this money as being a critical hedge against the other VC-backed players that are starting to edge onto ActiveRain’s turf. Zillow and Trulia (with its new Agent2Agent product) have all recently started to try and corner real estate agents’ conversations online.

In any case, news of the funding announcement certainly begins to clear up many of the nagging questions around ActiveRain’s long-term viability. Though it had started to monetize the community a little, mainly through advertising, profitability remained a long way’s off – and is still at least 12 months away, according to Heaton and Washburn. This funding gives them the breathing room they need.

Neither of the founders would comment on how the investment affects ActiveRain’s ongoing lawsuit against Move.com (see Move.com Tried to Buy ActiveRain).

Share on Facebook

Hitwise, the Internet traffic ranking service, just released its US Real Estate Report for February 2007. The report is based on a sample audience of 10 million US Internet users. It’s kind of like Nielsen numbers for the ‘Net.

Top 30 Real Estate Websites

(click on thumbnail to get a larger image)

My observations:

• Move.com is on the march… Maybe Dustin Luther’s guerilla marketing tactics are paying off with some new eyeballs.
• MSN Real Estate is slipping. No surprise here. There’s been little to no development of this portal – certainly no new features to speak off. Looks like it’s getting left in the dust.
• HouseValues perking up? After a long slump HouseValues has made a significant jump in the rankings. I’ve been seeing a lot of HouseValues’ commercials on my local cable channels lately – I’m guessing this renewed advertising blitz is paying off in some traffic to the beleaguered destination.

Top Search Terms

(click on thumbnail to get a larger image)

My observations:

• Zillow.com in the Top 10 means all its PR initiatives have paid off big time in huge brand awareness. This company has done little to no traditional marketing. That’s quite an achievement.
• Brand slugfest. Remax demolishes all other brands in searches. Coldwell Banker and Century21 are playing catchup.

Speaking of search, in a related post on Hitwise’s blog, Bill Tancer drills down into the connection between Google and Real Estate. Apparently, the Mountain View giant is responsible for 16% of the total traffic to real estate sites.

He also points out that Google Base is enjoying some success too – largely due to applications utilizing its database. Realogy’s 500,000+ listings are bound to help them out too (see Trulia Lands the Big One). According to Tancer, the following verticals are the most popular uses of Google Base.

• Employment 15.7%
• Real Estate 13.1%
• Auto Classifieds 11.9%
• Recipes: 7.1%
• Retail: 4.6%
• News: 3.4%

I’m still not entirely clear what Google’s end goal is with Google Base – but it’s clear its use for real estate is growing substantially.

Share on Facebook

John Cook reports that things are looking grim for the lead generator.

posted a net loss of $1.5 million for the quarter. That compared to profits of $4.3 million for the same period last year.

I’m not sure I buy CEO’s explanation that it was all due to market conditions. I’d pin it on evolving online marketing strategies and Realtors and brokers no longer paying for leads.

Share on Facebook