Real Estate Stocks Acquisitions That Show Housing Market is Hot

Online real estate stocks are making waves recently following a series of acquisition announcements.

Zillow Z announced it has acquired Retsly, a Vancouver-based enterprise that assists developers in consolidating real estate information from multiple listing services (MLS), according to a Tech Crunch report. 

MLSs use various systems and software to collate, analyze and manage home listings data. Retsly’s service scrapes the data from these sites, legally, and “normalizes” it so developers can adopt them easily in applications authorized by MLSs.

The report added that Retsly will also provide MLSs with software application managers that ensure developers that “their content is being used appropriately.”

“This is an extension of our efforts to provide productivity tools to help MLSs, brokers, franchisors, teams and agents be more productive and successful,” Zillow’s Chief Revenue Officer Greg Schwartz told Tech Crunch.

Trulia TRLA meanwhile made its big acquisition move last year with the $355 million acquisition of Market Leader. Market Leader is a Washington-based maker of customer relationship management (CRM) software for the real estate sector.

According to Fortune, the acquisition is expected to result in more than 40,000 paying premium subscribers for Trulia. Trulia CEO Pete Flint told Fortune’s Dan Primack that both companies will be combining their products and services “to offer an end-to-end experience” for users. Market Leader’s back-end platforms for existing clients will run separately from Trulia’s services. 

RealBiz Media Group, Inc. RBIZ, another online real estate stock that has made a lot of buzz lately, has acquired ReachFactor, a social media marketing network for real estate agents.

The company has started rolling out its new service, Regional Advantage, using ReachFactor’s online marketing and video platform, in select markets nationwide, according to a statement.  

“The most active agents in real estate, the top 5%, are attracted to this kind of service because they experience first hand how hard it is to be a smart online marketer,” said RealBiz Chief Operating Officer Suresh Srinivasan in the statement.

“Our opportunity is to become their strategic partner and help them quickly win new listings and sell active ones through clever use of our technology and marketing skills.”

RealBiz Media is a leader in disruptive video marketing technologies and has quickly gained popularity in the industry for its Microvideo App and Nestbuilder Agent platform. The company also operates a home tour channel.  

As of press time, big caps Zillow and Trulia’s stocks closed at $192.32 and 40.48 respectively. Their microcap counterpart, RealBiz Media, closed at 0.16, up by 13.56 percent.