Zillow.com and Picayune Item launching co-branded real estate site

Published 4:44 pm Thursday, April 2, 2009

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 Picayune Item, are among the first newspaper Web sites to be powered by Zillow’s search technology beginning today. Additional papers including the Richmond Times-Dispatch and Winston-Salem Journal will launch sites in the coming months.

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 can also 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.

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“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,” said Lloyd Frink, Zillow president. “As our newspaper partners evolve and build out 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 Company; and Philadelphia Media Holdings. The first round of 101 co-branded sites are 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 largest and fastest-growing real estate Web sites, with 8.8 million unique visitors in March 2009, representing 70 percent traffic growth year-over-year.

About Zillow.com

Zillow.com is an online real estate marketplace where homeowners, buyers, sellers, real estate agents and mortgage professionals find and share vital information about homes and mortgages, for free. Launched in early 2006 with Zestimate® home values and data on millions of U.S. homes, Zillow has since added homes for sale, a directory of real estate and lending professionals, Zillow Advice and Zillow Mortgage Marketplace. One of the most-visited U.S. real estate Web sites, with more than eight million unique visitors per month, Zillow’s goal is to help people become smarter about real estate in every stage of the home ownership process—home buying, selling, remodeling and financing. The company is headquartered in Seattle and has raised $87 million in funding.

Zillow, Zillow.com, and Zestimate are registered trademarks of Zillow, Inc.