Real Estate web site Zillow.com last week announced its launch of the Zillow Professional Directory, a resource that enables real estate professionals and related service providers to market their services to the consumers who visit Zillow.com.
The directory launched with more than 150,000 listings of real estate professionals who already have an active profile on Zillow. Zillow is inviting any professionals who have a connect to local homeowners, buyers or sellers--from real estate agents, stagers and lenders to contractors, landscapers and architects--to include their listings in the directory. Consumers can search by specialty, business name, city, ZIP code or neighborhood.
When professionals register on Zillow.com, they are prompted to create a free profile page and identify their focus areas and expertise. They can enhance the profiles with photos, live listings, personal websites or video and narrative. Also, any of the professional's contributions to Zillow, such as listings, Q&A or discussion posts, link back to their directory profile.
As Zillow works to create a community among the individuals in the real estate market (from buyers and sellers to realtors), the addition of this directory is a natural next step. It seems that it was a relatively easy move as well, since Zillow was able to include the professionals who already had profiles featured on Zillow.
With a struggling real estate market, it shouldn't take much effort to attract other real estate professionals to the directory. For the same reason, the other professionals who can also include their listings (such as landscapers) will also likely be interested in this new offering.
The Zillow site already boasts an impressive amount of traffic. According to the company, Zillow recorded more than 5.4 million unique visitors in September 2008, which represents a 42 percent year-over-year increase in traffic. This new directory should certainly help increase the site's popularity with all of the members of the real estate community it serves.