Zillow to Acquire Web Real estate Site Trulia

Zillow Inc., the biggest real estate web site in the U.S. , is set to acquire the second-largest online real estate company Trulia Inc., for around $3.5 billion in stock. Both companies registered more than 68 million visitors in June, or about 71 percent of online users under ComScore’s real estate category.

The acquisition will enable Zillow to surpass the market value of competitor Realogy Corp., which owns popular brokerage brands such as Coldwell Banker and Century 21.

Realogy, the biggest residential estate broker and operator reportedly increased its market value from $5.47 billion to $5.67 billion last week, according to Bloomberg News. Zillow, on the other hand, increased its market value from $4.99 billion to $5.83 billion on July 23.

Companies such as Zillow, Trulia and Realogy present real estate information to buyers and renters online. Advertisements and realtor charges generate revenues for these sites. Zillow, for example, have forums where real estate buyers and agents can exchange advice and property-value estimates for properties that are either on sale or off the market.

Last year, agents and brokers spent 71 percent of their $11.9 billion advertising budget on online media, the highest of any industry in the US, according to Virginia-based advertising research firm Borrell Associates. Usually, industries spend only 30 percent of their advertising budget on Internet-related campaigns.

More and more home buyers are now turning to real estate websites when searching for properties and mortgages, relying less on real estate agents.

According to real estate trends author Stefan Swanepoel, the shift from the traditional to the web-based real estate model will speed up as younger and tech-savvy shoppers make up the purchasing segment of real estate properties. These shoppers become even more dependent on the Internet for property information such as pricing and services.

With today’s technology, buyers can view homes and properties at the comforts of their home.

RealBiz Media Group RBIZ, an imaging and video solutions provider for brokers and agents, allows online real estate companies to create their own virtual tour videos.

Nestbuilder.com, RealBiz’s consumer website, allows home buyers to choose and view various homes and buildings on sale. Currently, there are over two million video listings in the site.

Its applications allow agents and brokers to easily turn listings into virtual and video tours. The company already has 350,000 clients all over the Unites States.

RealBiz Media’s Nestbuilder.com aims to grant agents control over how they want to run marketing campaigns for their listings. The portal came at a time when the norm among agents for capturing leads is to buy them from established multiple listing sites.

“Nestbuilder.com’s mission is to both empower the real estate agent and to connect the homeowner and homebuyer directly with the agent in a personalized and meaningful relationship without interference from large, impersonal, third party lead generation sites,” RealBiz Media President and chief revenue officer Steve Marques noted.

“Homebuyers are able to create personalized video collections of potential homes to be set-up for review and sharing. Agents can quickly bring their listings to life via RealBiz’s rich video conversion tools, and market their properties directly to homeowners and homebuyers in a personalized, customized, entertaining, and engaging format no matter where they are," he said.

Nestbuilder Agent is targeted at real estate agents who are looking for a marketing tool to create professional virtual tours and videos that complement their marketing campaigns. The platform is a feature of consumer site Nestbuilder.com.

The Microvideo App, meanwhile, is an automated video marketing platform targeted at enterprise clients. It allows agents and their brokers to create seamless and mobile-capable videos and virtual tours, as well as microsites where they can keep their clients informed about their brands, and community events.