Zillow continued its buying spree this week with its purchase of Buyfolio, a real estate shopping website based in New York City.
By Peter Ricci
Zillow has completed its fourth major acquisition in just 18 months, purchasing the real estate shopping website Buyfolio for an undisclosed sum.
A fun, streamlined approach to online home shopping, Buyfolio is a New York City-based site that currently focuses on NYC real estate. Between searching for listings, tracking and saving properties to your profile and discussing them with your broker, spouse or family, it offers a clean, intuitive experience for consumers.
Zillow Purchases Buyfolio
Zillow has not said much on how it intends to incorporate the site into its business model, but it has stated that it intends to extend Buyfolio’s services to a national market – though it will restrict access and only offer it to Zillow Premier Agents, a feature that costs agents at least $10 a month. Homebuyers, though, will have free access to the those tools.
“This acquisition allows Zillow to expand its suite of software tools for Premier Agents and brokerages, and will help them convert Internet leads into closed sales,” said Spencer Rascoff, Zillow’s CEO, in a statement. “We’re very excited to welcome the Buyfolio team into Zillow.”
Buyfolio’s co-founders, Matt and Susan Daimler, will stay on as part of the acquisition. The two also founded SeatGuru.com, which Expedia purchased in 2007.
Zillow Aggressively Expanding Syndication Services
Zillow has been an aggressive busy shopper as of late. In May, it purchased RentJuice for $40 million; in November 2011, it bought Diverse Solutions, a search platform for listings, for $7.8 million; and in April 2011, it purchased Postlets.
As Inman News noted, Zillow has plenty of cash to spare – $156.7 million, in fact – after a successful secondary offering to investors.
And along with all the companies it has purchased, Zillow has also expanded its in-house services as well. From its zPro for Brokers program to its ambitious incorporation of 1.2 million foreclosure properties to its site, Zillow has been making strides to differentiate itself among the real estate tech scene – which it may have to do more of, given that Trulia is coming off a highly-successful IPO of its own, and will certainly be making acquisitions to bolster its market share.