The Free Press, Mankato, MN

Local News

March 30, 2009

Zillow going online

Real estate site heavy with tools

By Tim Krohn

MANKATO — An online service that not only lists homes for sale but offers a variety of tools, including one to let homeowners get an estimate of what their home would list for, will be featured in a partnership with The Free Press.

Zillow.com, the second largest real estate site, will be tied with The Free Press and its Web site (www.mankatofreepress.com) under a new partnership by the newspaper’s parent company, Community Newspaper Holdings Inc.

“This is a continuation of our work to remain the leading source for local news and information,” said Free Press Publisher Jim Santori.

“Through this partnership, our readers will now have access to local homes for sale and open house listings, valuation estimates, recently sold homes and local market data — all through Zillow’s search functions.

“This strengthens our online audience, which is constantly growing, and it improves our overall readership, which is stronger than ever,” Santori said.

Zillow, with more than 5 million unique visitors a month, has a variety of tools including historical home market trends for states and cities and aerial views of cities that a user is searching homes in.

Zillow’s database already contains most listings from the larger franchise brokers such as Century 21, Coldwell Banker, Prudential and more. The Free Press will work with local brokers and MLS services to add more local listings.

CNHI has joined up with the Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium in using the Zillow.com platform to expand options for those selling or buying homes. The project will be launched Wednesday.

The consortium is made up of 11 newspaper publishing companies representing 282 newspapers nationwide.

CNHI and The Free Press last year launched a similar partnership with the Monster.com employment Web site.

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