Hello OC-Friends,
Today we will review some popular Real Estate websites that are known by many people. These sites attract hundred thousands, if not million, viewers each month and have a lot of different real estate offered on their websites. What makes these websites so good and popular? What do they offer you? And can a site like theirs be made with Open Classifieds too? Lets have a look!
1. Zillow – 36M unique visitors each month
Zillow is one of the biggest real estate websites. It is an American company which was founded in 2006 en currently seated in Seattle. According to their own website they have a living database of over 110 million properties available. This includes homes for sale, homes for rent and homes that are currently not on the market.
When we visit their website we notice a very clean and organized design. Their is one big slider, which displays several attractive pictures of real estate. On the slider a simplistic search engine can be found to perform a quick search. After this search the user will see a map with the available properties displayed and also as a list. To narrow down the search results, filters can be applied, which are located right under the top menu of the website. All important filters, like number of bedrooms, price, home type, etc are available.
All in all we think that website has a very nice design, showing a lot of information in an organized way. There are many, many features that visitors of the website can use. One feature that we like a lot is the “draw a region” feature, with which you can draw a shape around the regions that you would like to live in. That way you are not limited to searching for certain states or cities, but you can specify as precise as you want. Great feature!
2. Trulia – 23M unique visitors each month
With over 23 million unique monthly visitors, Trulia is another very big real estate website. It started in 2005 and has its headquarters in San Fransisco. They say that they try to provide the most vibrant and valuable marketplace for home searchers. This is done trough an innovative website, which is also available on mobile and offers native apps for iOS and Android too.
When we compare the homepage of Trulia with the homepage of Zillow, they are quite similar. Also Trulia has a big front picture, which contains a search engine on there. Performing a search leads the user to another page, that shows a listing of the search results. From here filters can be applied to find better and more exact matches that fit the requirements of the user.
Next to all the necessary information about the real estate itself, Trulia also offers a lot of information about other related subjects. To make it easier for searchers if the house is located in a good area for them, information about schools in the neighborhood (and their quality) for example is given with each advertisement. Also information about crime is displayed. Those are very interesting features that help people in their search for a new home.
3. Yahoo Homes – 20M unique visitors each month
Almost everyone knows Yahoo. It started as a directory for other websites and also as one of the bigger search engines. The company grew rapidly and now offers a wide variety of products. Yahoo homes is one of them. Every month Yahoo attracts approximately 20M unique visitors and with that Yahoo homes is one of the big players on the market.
Unlike Trulia and Zillow, Yahoo Homes doesn’t display a big picture or slider on its homepage. It has a rather different design than the former two discussed websites. There is simplistic search engine displayed, with around it a lot of links to other pages. Some of these pages have a link to housing, some have not. We find it a little distracting, but anyway. Also on Yahoo the user will see a listing page with the search results. This is a neatly ordered listed, which can be re-sorted by a users preference. On the left side we find many filters that can be applied to search more specifically.
However all necessary information is available on Yahoo, the site is pretty basis when compared to Zillow and Trulia. There are no unique features or options that make Yahoo Homes stand out from other real estate websites. It probably especially is a popular website because of the name.
4. Realtor – 18M unique visitors each month
Also Realtor is a real estate website that is focusing on the American market. It has listings for both the US and Canada and attracts roughly 18M unique visitors monthly. The website is part of Move Inc. that includes several other real estate related companies.
The homepage of Realtor is quite comparable with Zillow and Trulia. It displays a big picture of real estate and contains the search engine. What is a little different, it that under the big picture links to articles are located. These articles are all related to real estate and refer to articles on the same website. We think that from a design perspective this is not the best, as it is quite distracting and makes the front page not very organized.
Like with the previous discussed websites, also Realtor show the search results as a list. Also this list contains very much information, filters, buttons etc. Therefore the overview is not optimal. On the other hand there are many ways to narrow down the search and find what you want. If a user prefers to search on a map, this is also possible. You can switch to a map and then all the search results are listed on there. What is nice, is that on the right the listing is still displayed o the sidebar.
5. Trovit – 47M unique visitors each month
With Trovit we have a company that is not only focusing on the USA. Trovit is a start up from Barcelona and has become one of the biggest property aggregators in the world. This classifieds website no only focuses on real estate, but also has a portal for cars and jobs.
As said, Trovit is available in many countries. For almost 50 countries there are listings available. This makes Trovit a true international company. The main difference with the other real estate website is that Trovit doesn’t have its own database with properties. It is crawling other websites and displaying their advertisements on Trovit. The interesting thing of that is that you have a huge potential of real estate that you are searching for.
Looking at the design and functionality of the website we can notice that there aren’t very big differences with its competitors. Also on Trovit the user first searches with a simple search engine, after which it gets to see a listing page. There the search can be narrowed down with filters. The lists displays the most important data of the advertisements. When clicking on one, the user is redirected to another website, where it can find more detailed information about the property. That is actually the most important difference with the other websites, who actually have all the data on their own website.
Creating a Real Estate website with Open Classifieds
Open Classifieds enables you to make your real estate website. It offers great options to create a classifieds website with real estate listed. The software provides specified features for making a real estate website, using search fields specifically made for real estate (type of property, number of rooms, for sale/for rent, etc.). Maybe you don’t want to compete with one of these big companies, but there are many possibilities for creating a real estate website focusing on specific locations. Think of a real estate website for the city where you are living at.
These kind of classifieds websites, that focus on a particular group, have been proved to be very successful. However these big websites are offering a great amount of real estate it is often also a hassle to find the property that is perfect for you. People therefore like it to have a website that is made for a specific group, as it makes their search way easier.
Getting curious and want to find out more about what Open Classifieds can offer you? Check our Real Estate demo that lists all the options and where you can try our demo site.
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