Redfin Gains Instant National Footprint With Acquisition of Walk Score • Seattle Bubble

Full disclosure: The Tim is currently a Redfin shareholder.

Well this is interesting.

Redfin was one of the last real estate search sites to integrate Walk Score into their listing pages. Today Redfin announced that they have acquired Walk Score.

From Redfin’s blog post:

The acquisition is Redfin’s first and the reason for it is simple: We want to give folks a complete portrait of what it would be like to live somewhere new, within the house and in the surrounding neighborhood.

Since developing its original idea, Walk Score has become an online authority on neighborhoods, adding cycling and transit metrics to the mix, and delivering 20 million scores per day through 30,000 partner sites. Even better, Walk Score has rental homes. This is all stuff that Redfin needs on its own site.

Redfin, meanwhile, with its membership in the Multiple Listing Services used by agents to list properties, is the authority on homes for sale; as a broker, we can also convert traffic into lasting, profitable customer relationships. We have a full suite of mobile applications.

The two businesses together nicely address one another’s needs: for Redfin, richer content about neighborhoods; for Walk Score, homes for sale to engage its online visitors, and a way to convert those visitors into happy, paying customers.

I’m honestly quite surprised that Zillow did not acquire Walk Score first, with as many companies as they have been swallowing up lately (StreetEasy, HotPads, Trulia, etc.).

The really interesting thing about this move is that it instantly gives Redfin a national footprint without compromising the superior quality of their real estate listing data. I’m very intrigued to see what they do in the coming years with their combined resources.

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