Yahoo is outsourcing yet another product to an outside company. Tonight, Yahoo is announcing an exclusive partnership with real estate listings and search site Zillow. As part of the partnership, which will go into effect later this year, Zillow will power all for-sale listings on Yahoo Real Estate. The financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.
Zillow’s will integrate its 4 million for-sale listings on Yahoo’s real estate site, where users will still be able to search for home listings by the same parameters as on Zillow’s site, such as by geography, price and other criteria. For-sale listings placed on Zillow will automatically appear on Yahoo Real Estate.
But the partnership is more than just an outsourcing of listings. Zillow and Yahoo Real Estate will be coordinating sales efforts for the advertising network, so that advertisers who buy Showcase Ads or Featured Listings on either site will automatically have those placed on both Yahoo Real Estate and Zillow. Zillow’s Premier Agent program will be extended to Yahoo Real Estate, and current Zillow advertisers will be offered the first chance to purchase Premier Agent placement on Yahoo.
This deal feels like deja vu of two months ago, when Yahoo announced that it was outsourcing personals to Match.com. Yahoo also outsources job listings to Monster, after it sold HotJobs to the job listing service for $225 million.
Similar to the situation with Match.com a few months ago, Yahoo and Zillow have a history of working together. In 2006, Yahoo Real Estate integrated Zillow’s home valuation technology into its user experience.
But it seems that yahoo isn’t completely handing over the keys to its real estate search to ZIllow. Zillow, which launched as a mortgage marketplace in 2008, also powers rentals, which Yahoo doesn’t appear to be aggregating. For now, at least.
Still, it’s a good deal for Zillow, a startup that survived the real estate market implosion, and seems to be back on its feet. The site has seen record traffic over the past six months and has seen 1.75 million downloads of its mobile apps. In my opinion, it’s only a matter of time until Yahoo just outsources all real estate listings, including rentals, to Zillow.