Zillow has expanded its focus on homes to the surrounding neighborhoods, adding neighborhood pages with detailed demographic information for more than 130 U.S. cities, the company announced.
“The pages are seeded with rich local demographic and real estate information, but are built for communities and neighbors to make their own,” according to the Zillow announcement.
Zillow’s online community can add photos, events and news, and can participate in discussions and ask or answer questions.
Trulia.com is another real estate search and community site that features neighborhood demographics and discussions. That site features a community-driven “Trulia Voices” area for neighborhood discussions and Real Estate Guides with city and neighborhood statistics.
Real estate brokerage company Redfin Corp. similarly announced Redfin Forums message boards, which allow neighborhood discussions in markets where Redfin operates, and Realtor.com operator Move Inc. has announced plans to incorporate neighborhood and school statistics into its search pages and to create online communities around local neighborhoods.
“Adding the ability for neighbors to meet, share information and learn about their local neighborhood is a natural next step for Zillow. We started with individual Web pages and ‘Home Q&A‘ for more than 70 million homes, and today we’re bringing the conversation out to the neighborhood level,” said Lloyd Frink, Zillow president, in a statement.
Neighborhood information is accessible from home details pages at Zillow or by clicking the “local real estate” link at the bottom of every Zillow page, according to the company announcement.
Zillow also announced “Zillow Discussions,” a forum-type feature that provides Zillow community members with a place to discuss real estate estate-related topics on a national level, such as investing, hiring an agent or staging a home.
And the company has launched a polls feature that allows Zillow users to create a survey on any topic and post it at the national or ZIP code level. “These polls show up on neighborhood pages, city pages and all discussion pages throughout the site,” according to the Zillow announcement.
Also, the Zillow home page is personalized for users who have registered or searched the site, so that it focuses on their home neighborhood, city or most recent search area, the company announced.
“The personalized home page includes geographically targeted data such as local homes for sale,” the company stated, as well as a new “My Snapshot” section with details about an individual’s participation at the site, such as the number of questions asked and the number of homes posted for sale.
