We get asked a lot about just who is using Zillow.com. Are they homeowners? Potential buyers or sellers? Snoopers?
While we designed the site for homeowners and those in the market to buy or sell a home, we of course wondered ourselves if the site was attracting our intended audience. Like everyone else, we’ve heard ourselves referred to as a unique form of entertainment.
So, we recently set up a survey on our site to find out. Just over 1,000 Zillow users participated between May 22-27, 2006. Here’s what we found:
Who is using Zillow?
- More than half of Zillow users (54%) say they are either actively buying or selling a home, or thinking about buying or selling in the next 12-24 months.
- Most Zillow users (86%) own their own home. (Interestingly, U.S. home ownership is 69% according to the U.S. Census, so we’re skewing toward homeowners.)
How are people using Zillow?
- When asked what brought them to the site, nearly 60% said they wanted to check the value of their own home, 50% said they’d like to get a feel for home prices in an area, and 30% were specifically looking to determine a selling price or bid price on a home. (note respondents were able to list multiple answers.)
Where are people looking up homes?
- More than 60% told us they are looking up homes in the area where they currently live, with more than 80% sticking within the same state – reminding us again that real estate is very local.
- Meanwhile geographically, while people are visiting Zillow from all across the U.S., our top users are quite naturally are coming from areas where our data tends to be more robust, particularly the Pacific, Mountain and Northeast regions.
Do people come back to Zillow after their initial visit?
- Here’s where we got a big “wow.” More than two-thirds say they’ve visited two or more times in the past two weeks, with a quarter of users visiting five or more times.
- Additionally, almost three-quarters of Zillow users said they are somewhat or very likely to return to Zillow during the next month.
- This syncs with our own internal data, which says that in any given month, about 60% of visits to Zillow.com are from people who have been to the site before, while 40% of people are new.
Bottom line: People are coming to the site, and and many of them come back frequently. The overwhelming majority of them are homeowners, and more than half plan to buy or sell a home soon. Are they peeking in on our famous homes page or checking a neighbor’s recent sale in the process? Sure, but that doesn’t seem to be the primary reason they’re coming to the site. Which makes us all the more excited to unveil new tools and features for real estate buyers, sellers and enthusiasts.
Stay tuned — as data-holics, we’re digging further into some additional questions and will be sharing more user information in the coming weeks.