• by Tanya Gazdik , January 13, 2011

Homes.com has entered into an ad partnership with the real estate company Re/Max to showcase the former's listings on its site.

Hitwise ranked Homes.com, a division of Dominion Enterprises, as the seventh-most popular real estate portal in January. The site claims 5.5 million monthly visitors and nearly 4 million properties for sale or rent.

The partnership follows a pilot program in the Central Florida and Mid-Atlantic markets that the companies said generated 7,000 additional leads for Re/Max associates and more than 1.3 million additional listing views.

The partnership has now expanded to over 150,000 Re/Max listings advertised on Homes.com. These listings now drive traffic to Remax.com and increase lead generation opportunities for Re/Max offices around the nation.

Homes.com has a proven record of attracting qualified prospects who are in the early stages of the home buying process, says Jason Doyle, vice president of Homes.com. "With this partnership, we are also enhancing the consumer experience by streamlining the hand-off to industry-leading Re/Max agents at the local level," he says.

The partnership gives Re/Max listings added visibility and drives more buyers and sellers to a qualified Re/Max agent, adds Marnie Blanco, Re/Max vice president, eBusiness.

In 2010, Re/Max Commercial entered a strategic alliance with LoopNet, the most-visited online commercial real estate marketplace. The agreement allows Re/Max to integrate LoopNet's market-leading property search technology into the remax.com website, providing enhanced searching, mapping and listing display.

Through the alliance with LoopNet, whose website averages nearly 2 million unique monthly visitors, Re/Max offices in more than 80 countries, including 3,000 commercial practitioners, will be able to give their commercial listings unparalleled global exposure.

Meanwhile, back on the residential side, Homes.com hit some milestones in 2010, despite the shaky housing market. Over 66 million consumers visited the site, viewing well over 1 billion pages in 2010, representing a 40% increase in page views over the previous year. This increase in traffic resulted in a 57% increase in consumer leads generated for real estate professionals on Homes.com.

Powering this increase in traffic and leads was the launch of Homes.com's new Questions and Answers community, where consumers actively searching for their next home or selling their current home can connect with local real estate agents for advice. Since its launch in June 2010, this new feature generated over 10,000 questions, providing real estate professionals a host of opportunities to connect with consumers in their local area at no charge. In 2010, Homes.com also boasted a 151% increase in consumer and real estate professional signups from 2009.

Also in 2010, Homes.com was the first real estate search Web site to reach all mobile consumers through its suite of mobile apps. Included are iPhone, Android, and Blackberry platforms, along with a Web site optimized for other mobile handsets. Homes.com's mobile Web site saw 60 million page views in 2010, nearly six times the amount of mobile traffic in 2009.