Microsoft launches a $44.6 Billion unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo.

Let’s assume for a moment that the deal will stick (and it certainly sounds like it’s farther along than we think) – what does it mean for online real estate?

First and foremost, it likely means consolidation at the top of the real estate portals as the #2 and #3 sites (according to ComScore) will probably merge.

MSN Real Estate has been the ugly stepchild of the Real Estate 2.0 crowd to date – merely an afterthought, despite its massive monthly traffic.

Yahoo Real Estate, by contrast, has been pushing out new features steadily and is clearly the superior of the two destinations. No doubt in my mind – Y!RE will win out and become the dominant destination. This is surely great news in the minds of the folks at Yahoo who have been troubled by their future for weeks (see What’s in Store for Yahoo Real Estate).

Who this impacts most is Move.com – partly because they’ll see a combined entity nipping at the heels of Realtor.com, but also because they currently power MSN’s real estate searches (and no doubt draw a bunch of their own traffic from those searches).

Will Y!RE under its tent, MSN will likely push that relationship to the side and focus on tying all of its new properties under a revamped real estate destination.

A revitalized MicroHoo mega-portal is something that the other Real Estate 2.0 participants must dread as well. Especially since most are now into the second and third years of operations and are still hoping to gain traction amongst consumers. This could be the final nail in their coffins.

In any case, all speculation at this stage. But definitely fun to think about.

More:

• Greg Sterling gives ‘Micro-Hoo’ the Local Angle

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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

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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

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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.

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