Real-estate Web sites launch today

Real estate Web site Zillow.com today announced plans to launch co-branded real estate Web sites with 180 newspapers nationwide, powered by Zillow.

The Tampa Tribune and 100 newspapers published by Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. — including the Commercial-News — are among the first newspaper Web sites to be powered by Zillow’s search technology, beginning today.

With this relationship, newspaper Web sites will now include Zillow’s powerful search functionality, whereby users can enter any home address, neighborhood or locality and find Zestimate home values, recently sold homes, homes for sale, open house listings and local market data, on a co-branded version of Zillow.com. Visitors to the co-branded sites also may access all of Zillow’s real estate community content via Zillow Advice, and mortgage rates and information from Zillow Mortgage Marketplace.

The launch of co-branded Web sites powered by Zillow extends the scope of the Zillow Newspaper Consortium formed in November 2007 with 11 major newspaper publishers, whereby newspaper sales teams sell featured listings and premiere advertising inventory on Zillow.com to local real estate advertisers.

“This next step of the Zillow Newspaper Consortium brings Zillow’s unique local content and data to millions of online newspaper visitors searching for real estate information,” Lloyd Frink, Zillow president, said in a press release. “As our newspaper partners evolve and build online content, we’re excited to be a key part of the process.”

“Together with Zillow, we are able to give our consumers a wealth of local real estate data, information and news about the city and neighborhoods in which they live or are interested in living,” said Kirk Read, president of interactive for Media General, Inc.

“The combination of Zillow’s cutting-edge real estate technology with CNHI’s deep community relationships will help us serve local readers and businesses in exciting new ways,” said Donna Barrett, CEO of Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. “This relationship with Zillow will help cement our status as the deepest, richest source of local information in our markets.”

The Zillow Newspaper Consortium is made up of 11 major publishing companies, including Hearst Newspapers; Media General, Inc.; The E.W. Scripps Company; MediaNews Group; Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc; Morris Communications Com-pany; and Philadelphia Media Holdings. The first round of 101 co-branded sites is launching today, with additional sites launching throughout 2009.

Zillow’s popular real estate content includes data and Zestimate values on more than 88 million U.S. homes, 3.3 million listed homes for sale, and updated mortgage information and quotes from the Zillow Mortgage Marketplace. Zillow is one of the larg-est and fastest-growing real estate Web sites, with 8.8 million unique visitors in March 2009, representing 70 percent traffic growth year-over-year.

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