SAN FRANCISCO –OBSNews- The real estate market in the US is in the midst of a historic transformation. Everyone who reads the news about buying and selling a home in the country is aware that prices for homes in many areas across the nation are falling as a result of the bursting of the housing bubble. Real estate industry watchers also know that the migration of real estate data and advertising towards the internet is creating deep unease and falling profit margins among newspaper businesses which are frantically struggling to reinvent themselves in the world of interactive media.

But there is another sea change that is occurring in the world of residential real estate and it portends ill for real estate agents and brokers accustomed to doing business in the old-fashioned way. According to the National Association of Realtors more than 80% of prospective home sellers and buyers use the internet when they look to buy or sell a house. Users of online real estate tools will often then work with an agent they know personally, but they are just as likely to reach out for professional help via the companies they interact with on the web.

What this means for the ordinary real estate agent and the traditional real estate brokerage companies is an era of new marketing alliances. In many cases, what was once a fierce rivalry between online marketers for real estate and the old guard has now become a mutually beneficial relationship with the technologists on the web finding and partnering with agents who have specialized local knowledge and industry experience.

Below are some of the leading internet real estate companies.:

1. www.RealEstate.com – Barry Diller’s Interactive Corp. (IAC.com) via LendingTree.com owns this site and late last year moved to create local real estate offices designed to compete with the Century 21® and RE/MAX® traditional brokerages.

2. www.TheHomeBuyingCenter.com – This company provides home sellers with an opportunity to sell a house directly to a real estate investor. They also help home buyers find low-priced deals on houses in foreclosure and on bank-owned properties. They also refer home sellers to real estate agents and brokers across the nation to help people sell quickly when the houses do not meet their investment criteria.

3. www.HomeGain.com – This site is owned by Classified Ventures, a strategic joint venture of several large media complies (Belo Corporation, Gannett Company, The McClatchy Company, Tribune Company and The Washington Post Company). This site attempts to be an online matchmaker between sellers and buyers and real estate agents.

4. www.Trulia.com – This site is residential real-estate search engine that offers real estate information such as homes for sale, house listing and sale prices and market trends. Trulia is advertising supported.

5. www.Zillow.com – Zillow provides an estimated appraisal value for homes across the United States and provides a forum to homeowners, home buyers, and agents to create discussion groups. This site makes its money from selling ads on it heavily trafficked website.

6. www.Terabitz.com – This company provides yet another free service for real estate consumers. They attempt to aggregate large amounts of information about residential real estate that includes local neighborhood information, market research, schools, restaurants, crime and safety statistics, service providers, financial tools, and more. They make their money from targeted local advertising.

7. www.Redfin.com – Currently serving just seven major real estate markets across the US, Redfin is an online discount real estate broker that they describe as half electronic and half personal. They employ real estate agents directly and claim to rebate commissions to home sellers and buyers thus making their services cheaper than traditional agents and brokers.

8. www.Craigslist.com – Even though the by-now-classic website does not make money via real estate advertising, thousands of houses for sale and apartments for rent are listed in many different cities across the country. Craigslist has been a major reason why newspapers have been forced to re-tool their business models that once depended primarily on real estate and automotive classifieds for revenue.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif –OBSNews- Despite the historic downturn in the housing market in the United States several real estate websites have seen their operations increase substantially and have received millions of dollars in funding from investors. 

It is estimated that in the past twelve months over $50 million has been poured into online real estate marketing and brokerage businesses by venture capitalists and other investors.  Trulia.com, Zillow.com, Terabitz.com, and Redfin.com are among the companies who have received substantial funding to increase operations.

Newspapers and other traditional forms of advertising for the real estate industry have seen their real estate ad revenues plummet.  In a statement released recently Pat Talamantes, the Chief Financial Officer for the McClatchy Company, which owns a large number of newspapers in market across the US, said, “a majority of the decline continued to come from newspapers in California and Florida, two states severely affected by the real estate downturn, and we are feeling the impact of worsening economic trends.”

McClatchy reported revenue declines of 14 percent in January with a dramatic 35 percent decline in real estate advertising.

One company that is seeing its online real estate activities pick up dramatically is Sacramento, California based http://www.TheHomeBuyingCenter.com.   This company provides homeowners who want to sell their houses quickly an opportunity to speak with a real estate investor about the value of their home and receive a professional investor opinion, or PIO.   The company also helps people who want to buy a foreclosure home find and acquire properties at below-market prices. 

Company president Patrick McGilvray commented, “as you can imagine, with foreclosures being such a hot topic, we have been flooded by interested home sellers and buyers.  We have been in discussions with several groups of angel investors, interactive media companies, and a few venture capitalists.  We have had some very attractive offers to help us finance our growth, and we’re in the process of reviewing several proposals.