ComScore data show potential for combined Zillow, Trulia to dominate

The latest comScore numbers on consumer traffic to real estate search portals bolster predictions that Zillow’s plans to acquire Trulia will put the company in a league of its own in its ability to connect homebuyers and sellers with real estate brokers and agents.

Zillow says it will continue to operate Trulia as a separate brand, but will have the ability to sell advertising to agents across a network of real estate sites. Zillow already powers real estate search on Yahoo Homes, AOL Real Estate, HGTV’s FrontDoor, HotPads and MSN Real Estate.

ComScore data gives some indication of the coming Zillow colossus that could take shape sometime next year, when the acquisition is expected to close.

In June, Zillow captured 46 million unique visitors to zillow.com from desktop computers and mobile devices (including mobile Web and native apps), representing 48 percent of all visitors to real estate sites that month, according to comScore.

Unique visitor traffic* to most popular real estate sites, June 2014

Source: comScore *Includes traffic from desktop computers and mobile devices (mobile Web and native apps)

Trulia captured 27.4 million unique visitors in June, representing 28.6 percent of all real estate Web consumers.

Since some people went to both sites, you can’t just add up unique visitors to come up with the market share that a combined Zillow and Trulia would command. But the numbers do give a sense of the dominance the deal could give Zillow among consumers.

The third-most popular site in June, realtor.com, captured 22.4 million unique visitors or 23.4 percent of all visitors to real estate sites in the month. In May, 23.6 percent of all visitors to real estate sites visited realtor.com.

Part of realtor.com’s relative low traffic growth from May to June can be attributed to the cyberattack that disrupted several of Move’s sites including realtor.com for several days in June. Move estimates that its actual unique visitors would have been 3 or 4 percent higher in the month if it hadn’t suffered the attack, Move CEO Steve Berkowitz told investors on the firm’s second quarter earnings call with investors.

After realtor.com, traffic drops off. Homes.com, at No. 4 in June, captured 11.2 million unique visitors, or 11.7 percent of all visitors to real estate sites.

However, that Homes.com data includes traffic to its network of sites, including ForRent.com. The Zillow, Trulia, realtor.com stats above represent traffic just to the sites zillow.com, trulia.com and realtor.com, themselves. Inman News doesn’t receive similar traffic info for Homes.com at the moment.

Realtor.com captured a fewer percentage of overall visitors to real estate sites in June than it did in May, while Zillow and Trulia picked up market share over the same period.

Both Zillow and Trulia have rolled out bigger national marketing campaigns this year than realtor.com operator Move Inc. has for its flagship portal, which could account for some of the differences in relative consumer mindshare growth (or decline). Zillow’s set to spend $65 million on its 2014 campaign; Trulia has budgeted $45 million for its effort; and Move’s campaign has been estimated to be at around $25 million.

In mid-July, the National Association of Realtors launched a $35 million “Real People” national marketing campaign, to promote realtor.com and Realtors. That could improve relative consumer visits to NAR’s official consumer website.

It’s official: mobile now rules real estate search

June marked the first month in which more visitors came to the top real estate networks — Zillow, Trulia and Move — from mobile devices than from desktop computers.

Zillow had 1.4 million more unique visitors from mobile devices than from desktop computers in June. The margin for Trulia and Move was 600,000 and 1.1 million, respectively.

Top 5 real estate networks by Web traffic, June 2014

Source: comScore  

Last month, just Move among the three most popular real estate networks had more visitors to its network from mobile devices than from desktop computers with 300,000 more visitors on mobile.

Overall traffic to real estate sites is still led by desktop computers, but its lead is shrinking over mobile. In June, 58.1 percent of visitors to real estate sites came from mobile devices compared with 64.2 percent from desktop computers. Those percentages were 58.2 percent and 68.4 percent, respectively, in May.

Top 15 real estate networks by Web traffic, June 2014

Source: comScore

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to note that Move says June traffic to its sites, including realtor.com, was affected by a cyberattack that disrupted the site for several days in June.