Realtor.com operator Move Inc. has renewed a content-sharing agreement with MSN that allows consumers to access Move’s property listings and related information from MSN Real Estate, the sixth-most popular real estate site in the U.S.
Under the agreement, Move will continue to power MSN Real Estate’s listings from a variety of databases — existing homes for sale from realtor.com, new homes and rentals from Move.com — and the two firms will share editorial content related to homebuying and renting. MSN Real Estate gets foreclosures from foreclosure.com, which is not a Move property.
MSN Real Estate had 7.1 million visits from desktop computers in the U.S. in May, representing 1.56 percent of all real estate-related Web traffic that month, according to data from Experian Marketing Services.
“We know that Microsoft had a number of choices in online … partners and are pleased to announce our continued long-standing relationship with MSN to deliver the most accurate and trusted real estate information to the MSN community,” said Barbara O’Connor, executive vice president of marketing for Move, in a statement.
“In a nutshell, what Barb is saying, is Move Inc. won the business from Zillow,” wrote Greg Robertson, an industry insider who runs the real estate software firm W&R Studios, on his blog at Vendor Alley.
Zillow has a similar arrangement with Yahoo’s real estate site Yahoo Homes, the fourth-most visited real estate-related website in the U.S. in May with 24 million hits representing a 5.24 percent Web market share, according to data from Experian.
Taken together, the “Yahoo-Zillow Real Estate network” accounted for 17.66 percent of U.S. Web traffic from desktop computers to real estate sites in May, according to Experian data.
Move has a similar network. In addition to powering listings at MSN Real Estate, the San Jose, Calif.-based firm syndicates a separate set of listings to AOL Real Estate through its ListHub subsidiary. Desktop Web traffic to Move’s network accounted for 8.32 percent of all real estate-related visits in the U.S. in May, according to Experian data.
Move and Microsoft last renewed their content-sharing agreement in 2010. According to Move, the agreement dates back seven years. According to Inman News’ archives, MSN and Move predecessor Homestore signed an agreement in 2003 that was renewed in 2007.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story indicated that foreclosure.com was a Move Inc. property, which is not the case.
