SEATTLE, Dec. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Real estate Web site Zillow.com today launched rental listings and search to its home shopping service and database of more than 90,000,000 U.S. homes. For the first time on Zillow, anyone can list a home for rent, and Zillow users can now search both rental homes and homes for sale in their area. Additionally, Zillow has built the industry's first search by monthly payment, allowing home shoppers to simultaneously find for-sale and for-rent homes, based on a monthly payment they can afford.

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According to a recent survey by Harris Interactive(1) 25 percent of people who plan to move in the next three years say they will search for both homes for rent and homes for sale.

With Zillow's new monthly payment search, home shoppers can now use the "monthly payment" filter as one of their search criteria in addition to specifics like number of bedrooms or bathrooms. Zillow calculates the monthly payment on homes for sale using that day's local mortgage rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, assuming a 20 percent down payment, and shows both for-sale and for-rent homes that match the entered criteria. Shoppers can then save their search and receive email notifications when new homes are listed. No other Web site helps home shoppers easily compare the monthly cost of owning versus renting side-by-side, and figure out the best solution for them today.

"In today's volatile housing market, many would-be sellers are opting to rent for a few years and ride out the market, while many home shoppers are just trying to decide whether to buy or rent," said Spencer Rascoff, Zillow Chief Operating Officer. "With the launch of rental listings and search, we are arming our more than 8 million monthly users with information, tools and options to make the right housing decisions for them today."

Home shoppers on Zillow can search for rental properties and homes for sale by neighborhood, ZIP code or city, and filter their search based on price, monthly payment and numerous home characteristics. Additionally, landlords now have the opportunity to reach the nearly one million renters who currently visit Zillow each month(2). Zillow offers landlords a premium listing experience, with a Featured Listing for just $9.95 for 180 days. Featured Listings are sorted to the top of search results and receive six times more views than non-featured listings. Each listing can include unlimited photos, a full list of property features, marketing text, a link to an external Web site for the property, and personal contact information.

Zillow.com is the second-largest real estate Web site, according to Hitwise. On average, 8.3 million unique visitors came to Zillow each month this year, up 60 percent over 2008.

About Zillow.com®

Zillow.com is an online real estate marketplace where homeowners, buyers, sellers, renters, real estate agents and mortgage professionals find and share vital information about homes and mortgages. Launched in early 2006 with Zestimate® home values and data on millions of U.S. homes, Zillow has since added homes for sale and homes for rent, a directory of real estate and lending professionals, Zillow Advice and Zillow Mortgage Marketplace. One of the most-visited U.S. real estate Web sites, with more than eight million unique visitors per month, Zillow's goal is to help people become smarter about homes and real estate in every stage of their lives -- home buying, selling, renting, remodeling and financing. The company is headquartered in Seattle and has raised $87 million in funding.

Zillow, Zillow.com, and Zestimate are registered trademarks of Zillow, Inc. Harris Interactive is a registered trademark of Harris Interactive, Inc.

(1) Harris Interactive® fielded the study on behalf of Zillow.com from November 19 to 23, 2009 via its QuickQuery(SM) online omnibus service, interviewing a nationwide sample of 2,475 U.S. adults ages 18+ of whom 561 ( 23% percent) plan to move into a new home within the next three years. This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated. A full methodology, including weighting variables, is available.

(2) Zillow logged an average of 8.3 million unique visitors each month in 2009, according to internal tracking by Omniture. Zillow's October 2009 site survey shows 11% of visitors self-identify as renters, resulting in an average of 913,000 renters who visit the site each month.

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SOURCE: Zillow.com

Web site: http://www.zillow.com/