Expand your search for a new home using these alternatives to Zillow and Trulia.
Zillow Group Inc as a company was founded in 2006 as a prominent online real estate portal. Zillow acts as a search engine for real estate that lists more than 110 million homes in the United States and Canada. Together with comparables and competing homes for each of the homes listed on the web, it also provides a value estimate known as the “Zestimate,” Many analysts consider Zillow to simply be a marketing firm that makes its money out of its ad placements.
Like Zillow, Trulia, Inc. is another platform for online residential real estate that connects home sellers in the United States with investors, tenants, and real estate professionals. Trulia was purchased by Zillow Group in 2015 for $3.5 billion with a business model close to Zillow’s.
Key Points to Consider
- Zillow Group is the largest online real estate company in the U.S., which comprises Zillow and Trulia.
- HomeSnap is known for its smartphone mobile app, which is user-friendly, while NeighborhoodScout offers additional information such as crime rates and school data for an area.
- Using several real estate websites to collect data is one of the easiest ways to look for a new home to compare data trends and to make sure information is constant.
Zillow Group Inc as an entity is currently known to be the largest online real estate website in the United States but not Canada and is calculated by the number of unique monthly visitors it tracks per month up to 59 million as of January 2019.
While an entity as large as the Zillow Group provides its customers with scale benefits, its market supremacy means it has not felt the need adapt to changing consumers and times as some of Zillow’s competitors have.
Trying to dethrone Zillow Group as an industry leader, several online real estate websites have sprung up. The following are five solutions that provide excellent alternatives to Zillow and Trulia.
Alternatives to Zillow and Trulia
1. Homestoc
Fairly new to the game is Homestoc Inc has been in business since 2015 and aims to redesign the experience of selling, renting and buying a home for Realtors, home owners, landlords, buyers and renters alike through complete transparency and trust. Homestoc currently operates in the United States and Canada and is quickly becoming one of the great alternatives to Zillow and Trulia. Although fairly new to the game Homestoc’s founder has been in the real real estate industry almost 25 years and has helped establish other successful real estate website portals both in Canada and the United States.
First, the user interface and site design are very similar to Zillow’s and Trulia’s, enabling users to use a map-based feature to search for property. Homestoc shows details such as square footage, year built, homeowner association dues, building materials, sewage system specifics, and other housing data points. After searching the site putting in criteria such as city, town, neighbourhood or address, users can browse homes and can also perform a side-by-side comparison of their favourite homes.
Special note to Realtors, home sellers and landlords: Anyone who posts a property for sale or rent on Hometoc will never ever have their leads or inquiries sold back to them or held back in anyway. Any leads or inquires will be sent directly to the registered users email address they provide at sign up. This is part of Homestoc’s dedication to transparency and commitment to building trust with Realtors, home sellers and landlords.
Homestoc also incorporates FREE local search engine optimization into every property on its system as well as FREE social reach ads pushing properties out to buyers and renters currently looking in the target areas based on the property address. Homestoc accomplishes this with their add platform that is deeply integrated into their system. No other real estate website offers this feature to date for FREE and its very efficient in generating quality inquires on properties for Realtors, For Sale by Owners and landlords.
2. Redfin
Redfin is a major online real estate company aiming to reinvent the way homes are purchased by people and is a excellent but very different alternative to Zillow and Trulia. It provides several advantages which make it one of the viable alternatives to Zillow and Trulia. Accessible on iOS and Android, the Redfin app promises to update its data every five minutes. Again, the user experience and site design are very similar to Zillow’s and Trulia’s, allowing users to search for properties using a map-based function.
Second, Redfin has additional features that Zillow and Trulia do not have. The company, which began as a real estate broker, employs a team of real estate agents that are rated by Redfin users. Compensation for these real estate agents is directly related to the ratings they receive. In order to help home buyers, the company also refunds part of the property commission back to the buyer.
Users should, however, be mindful that Redfin does not reveal exact addresses in certain cities if vendors choose to keep them secret, and if the listing agent wishes not to have it shown, the platform does not immediately have home valuation info. In other cities, Redfin will automatically provide complete sales and listing data.
Redfin also seems to be making a move to Canada but the agent portion of their services is not working at the time of this article.
3. Homesnap
Homesnap
is an online real estate website that provides features such as an intuitive search mechanism focused on maps and a comprehensive amount of property data. Its real estate browsing feature is simple to use, and is a good alternative to Zillow and Trulia.
Its mobile app is what sets Homesnap apart from the competition. With the app, a real-time photo of a house that is for sale on a mobile device can be taken and all the requisite selling information about the property can be queried by the app.
The mobile app also operates on houses, apartments, and condos that are not identified, offering consumers property prices in areas that are already off the market. For Android, iPhone, Apple Watch, and Apple TV users, the app is available.
4. NeighborhoodScout
NeighborhoodScout delivers details on communities in the United States to consumers. By entering a city or specific address, users can access the company’s neighbourhood information using the search feature. NeighborhoodScout delivers average house prices, local school data, census data, crime statistics, traffic data, and more after the search parameters are entered.
Although much of this content is free for consumers, some of the more robust data requires a subscription. With plans beginning at $39.99 a month, comprehensive school reports, crime rates, and housing appreciation rates are provided to customers.
At present, the details provided to users via the subscription service of NeighborhoodScout is not offered by either Zillow or Trulia, rendering it a viable alternative to either organisation.
5. Realtor.com and Realtor.ca
Although these are two completely different websites one operating in the United States and the other operating solely in Canada they are both worth a mention as they contain some of the highest numbers of properties for sale in both countries. These is some ways are even better alternatives to Zillow and Trulia than anything listed above as they have thousands of realtor members that add listing content.
Realtor.com is an online real estate company owned and operated by News Corp. (The National Association of Realtors licences the name “realtor”.) While the information is current, the website is more simple and does not include the comprehensive functionality of this list of Zillow, Trulia, or the other firms.
It is, however, related to MLS with the most up-to-date listings on the market and is a decent place to start looking for a home. It also has a text option for talking to real estate practitioners and a pricing feature to determine how prices are influenced by particular home amenities, such as a garage.
Once a home listing is found, a user can check with one of the four previously listed platforms and use a mixed approach to search for that home to get the most amount of details as possible. Bit y checking the listing data on various platforms such as Homestoc, Redfin, Homesnap or NeighborhoodScout allows the buyer to be highly informed before they contact the listing realtor on Realtor.com or Realtor.ca
Realtor.ca
is owned and operated by the Canadian real estate Association (CREA) and is similar to Realtor.com however it’s realtor members across Canada primarily have access to this site. Realtor.ca is currently by far the best place to go in Canada for the most up to date real estate listings as it has been around the longest and all MLS systems in Canada sink their data to this website. Realtor.ca is 99.9% real estate brokerage listings so if you would like your property added to the site you would need to list your property with a licensed real estate professional in your province or city.
In Conclusion
While Zillow and Trulia are common places for real estate, there are excellent alternatives. One of the toughest financial choices you’re going to make is buying a home, so it’s crucial to extract knowledge from a number of reliable outlets and platforms.