New Zillow-like platform for properties over $2 million debuts
Forbes and luxury real estate veterans are launching a new Zillow-like platform Thursday for properties over $2 million.
The listing site will feature luxury homes around the globe from $2 million to $160 million. Over 200 listings on the site are worth over $10 million. The partnership with Forbes is designed to draw on Forbes’ readership to attract new buyers with curated listings.
“We’re not going to spend years building a name, like Christie’s had to. Forbes already has a global brand,” with over 140 million monthly visitors, said Jeff Hyland, founder of the new platform called Forbes Global Properties and co-founder of Hilton & Hyland, a residential brokerage known for its expensive Beverly Hills listings.
The co-founders want the listing site to be a buyer generation tool, drawing high-income Forbes readers to their listings. Member brokerages have offices in more than 75 locations around the world. The venture will generate revenue from member dues and listing fees from nonmember agents but it will not charge commissions or referral fees.
The launch seizes on two emerging trends in U.S. real estate: online listing tool viewership and a luxury real estate boom. Some 97% of home buyers used the internet to search for a home in 2020, up from only 93% last year, and 51% of buyers actually found their home online in 2020, down slightly from last year but up from only 44% in 2015, according to the National Association of Realtors. Zillow viewership jumped 50% during the pandemic, as sheltered-in-place Americans dreamed of bigger homes, according to reports.
Meanwhile, luxury real estate is booming during the coronavirus pandemic as moneyed Americans look for larger, suburban and rural homes to weather the pandemic. Because of high demand, luxury single-family luxury sold for about $506 per square foot in October compared to only $463 per square foot at the same time last year. And single-family luxury listings typically sold in about 29 days compared to 59 last October, according to the Institute for Luxury Home Marketing.
“As great as 2020 has been for the luxury market — with the buyers looking for a bigger home, bigger backyard or a vacation home — 2021 will be an even better market” because of pent-up demand, said Bonnie Stone Sellers, chair of Forbes Global Properties and former CEO of Christie’s International Real Estate.
Sarah Paynter is a reporter at Yahoo Finance.
Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance
Follow Yahoo Finance on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flipboard, SmartNews, LinkedIn, YouTube, and reddit.
More from Sarah:
Fewer Americans are optimistic about the housing market
What to expect from commercial real estate in 2021
San Francisco rent hits historic lows but city still most expensive in US