Zillow.com entered the apartment rental arena late last year in a move which we described at the time as a direct assault on Apartments.com and a host of other rental listing companies. But the rivalry between Chicago-based Apartments.com and Seattle-based Zillow.com didn’t last too long. Today, the two companies are announcing a strategic partnership in which Apartments.com will distribute its 90,000 rental listings directly on Zillow. The direct feed more than doubles Zillow’s rental listings, bringing the total to more than 150,000.
The listings from Apartments.com also will appear on Zillow’s mobile application, which has been downloaded more than two million times.
A Zillow spokeswoman would not comment on the financial details of the Apartments.com alliance. But the company said that advertisers on Apartments.com will get increased exposure for their listings since roughly two million of Zillow’s 12 million monthly visitors are purported to be renters.
Zillow charges landlords $9.95 to per rental listing, with an individual listing appearing on the site for 180 days. Apartments.com, on the other hand, charges $79 for 30 days. Part of that fee includes syndication to AOL, Google Base, Oodle and now Zillow.
Zillow, which is led by former Expedia execs Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, has used a similar syndication strategy to build up its for-sale listings.
Apartments.com is owned by Classified Ventures, a joint venture of media companies Belo, Gannett, McClatchy Company, Tribune Company and The Washington Post Company.
August 31, 2010
source: techflash.com
