Year in Review: REALTOR.ca Traffic Grows Despite Pandemic

The word “unprecedented” has become synonymous with the year 2020.

While most news stories featuring that word refer to the uncertainty, we faced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we prefer to look on the bright side.

For example, REALTOR.ca experienced unprecedented traffic in 2020.

Last year, REALTOR.ca saw a whopping 374 million visits by 73 million users, compared to 291 million visits from 50 million users in 2019. While we’re proud of that growth, the good news doesn’t stop there.

REALTOR.ca visitors looked at property pages 1.7 billion times. That’s an average of 196,000 property views per hour!

That’s not to say the entire year was a strong one. Traffic did dip during the country-wide lockdown in the spring, however there was an average increase in traffic of 50% after May 2020.

We all know REALTOR.ca is the No. 1 real estate platform in Canada (ComScore), but in 2020 we saw a 15% year-over-year increase in national market share resulting in our largest annual average market share position to date—just shy of 40%.

While digital media consumption of real estate increased by about 18% over last year, REALTOR.ca saw an increase that was about 20% above this at 45% growth in visitors.

What does this mean for you? Every interaction with a consumer is an opportunity to communicate the true value of using a REALTOR® to buy or sell a home. Most importantly, every REALTOR.ca visitor session is an opportunity to convert into leads for you.

Speaking of leads, REALTOR.ca generated four million leads for REALTORS® in 2020—an increase of 38%! That represents four million opportunities to connect with a client to help them find their dream home.

We know 2020 was a challenging year for in-person business, which is why we acted fast in the spring to make it easier for you to promote your live stream open houses.

Since April, visitors have viewed 50,000 live streams or added them to their calendars.

For a detailed look at all the numbers, stay tuned for the complete REALTOR.ca Insights Report which will be published in the coming week.

We also continued to focus our efforts on improving other REALTOR.ca digital products, such as the REALTOR.ca Listing Stats app.

Several improvements were made to help meet the demands of not only our members, but our members’ clients. These enhancements include:

  • Introduced lifetime listing stats for listings—especially important for listings on the market for more than three months.
  • Made it easier to share listing stats reports with multiple clients at the same time.
  • Enhanced office listings with the ability to easily contact listing agents and share listings with clients.
  • Management of notification opt-ins and multiple board IDs are now available in the app menu.
  • Improved access to REALTOR.ca search and REALTOR.ca insights, not to mention listing stats and leads.

If you haven’t checked in with the REALTOR.ca Listing Stats app since the beginning of 2020, it’s time to re-introduce yourself!

Download the REALTOR.ca Listing Stats app today

Apple App Store button

  

What REALTOR.ca feature did you enjoy the most in 2020? What would you like to see in 2021? Let us know in the Comment section below.

As Associate Director, REALTOR.ca, Justin Wah Kan helps promote CREA’s valuable products and services. Justin has a professional background in digital marketing. He is also musically inclined with a Bachelor of Music degree in Music Composition and Music Technology. In his spare time, you can find him playing his guitars, cooking up a storm, and curling.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


@crea_aci