Real estate website traffic jumps 27%

NEW YORK – March 28, 2011 – Traffic to real estate websites increased 27 percent in February – the highest level since the first half of 2009. A bigger appetite for rentals has mostly driven the increase in real estate site traffic, according to a webinar by Experian Hitwise, in which it released its search tracking data.

The websites boasting the largest year-over-year increases in traffic were devoted to rental or rent-to-own listings, says Heather Dougherty, research director at Hitwise.

Also, traffic coming from social networks to real estate sites increased 61 percent year-over-year in February. Traffic to real estate sites from Facebook increased 42 percent alone.

Social networks now account for 4 percent of the overall traffic to real estate websites, Dougherty notes. The largest year-over-year increases in social media traffic last month were Yahoo! Real Estate, Trulia, Zillow and Realtor.com.

The following are the 10 most popular search terms on real estate sites in the last year, according to Hitwise:

1. rent to own homes
2. rent to own
3. foreclosure
4. for rent by owner
5. Puerto Rico real estate
6. houses for rent in Orlando
7. apartments for rent in Michigan
8. low income apartments
9. houses for rent by owner
10. reverse mortgage

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