ATLANTA, INTERNATIONAL BUILDERS SHOW (Hanley-Wood News Service) - HomeBuilder.com(TM), and the Builder Homesite Consortium, two of the building industry's leading sources of online sales leads, today announced an alliance to increase the online advertising reach of America's home builders. Under the multi-year agreement, HomeBuilder.com will undertake marketing efforts and act as the reseller for the Consortium's Web presence, newhomesource.com, and will be the exclusive reseller of newhomesource.com's pioneering performance based pricing model to non-Consortium builders. HomeBuilder.com is the Internet's leading new homes destination and the official site of the National Association of Home Builders. The Builder Homesite Consortium is comprised of 31 of the largest home builders who together build more than 225,000 homes annually.
The alliance will help builders increase their exposure of online new home listings while simplifying the collection of listing data. Through HomeBuilder.com, builders are offered one-stop shopping with the ability to advertise and display homes on two complimentary online networks: HomeBuilder.com and newhomesource.com. Builders listed on both sites can reach approximately 93% of the total Internet user audience.
New home listings on HomeBuilder.com benefit from being part of the Homestore(TM) Network which attracts more than 8 million individuals per month, and from being part of AOL's House & Home Channel, which access AOL's 33 million members and the AOL Time Warner network's more than 83 million unique monthly visitors, the most network visited in the country. New home listings on newhomesource.com benefit from an alliance with MSN, the country's second largest online destination, which attracts more than 75 million unique monthly visitors. (Jupiter Media Metrix, December 2001)
"Builders of all sizes have grown to accept the Internet's importance as a way to access home buyers. HomeBuilder.com and Builder Homesite have come together in a shared vision of how builders can improve their marketing and advertising,'' said Allan Merrill, HomeBuilder.com's President. ''From vastly increasing the online reach of builders, to collaborating on data standards, this alliance is an important step in the maturation of the Internet as a marketing medium for home builders.''
''We have reached a point in the evolution of the building industry where cooperation is more important than competition. Together, all key industry players can deliver better products that more seamlessly integrate into existing technology infrastructures,'' said Tim Costello, Builder Homesite's President and CEO. ''We're pleased to work with HomeBuilder.com to extend the existing relationships they have with thousands of builders nationally and offer builders of all sizes a marketing program that combined with HomeBuilder.com has the potential to reach most Internet users.''
HomeBuilder.com is located at Booth #936 at the International Builder's Show February 8-11 in Atlanta.
About Builder Homesite, Inc.
Builder Homesite, Inc is a consortium of homebuilders that was founded in 2000 in Austin, TX by 10 of the nation's largest homebuilders, which then quickly grew to 32 major Builders, representing 225,000 homes sold. The following leading national homebuilders are investors and consortium members: American Heritage Homes, Beazer Homes USA, Inc., Capital Pacific Holdings, Centex Corporation, D. R. Horton, Inc., David Weekley Homes, Del Webb, The Drees Company, Gateway Homes, Hammonds Homes, Highland Homes, Hovnanian Enterprises, Inc., John Wieland Homes, KB Home, Lennar Corporation, McGuyer Homes, M.D.C. Holdings, Medallion Homes, Morrison Homes, Neumann Homes, Orleans Homebuilders, Perry Homes, Pulte Homes, Ryan Building Group, The Ryland Group, Inc., Schuler Homes, Inc., Signature Homes, Sivage Thomas Homes, Standard Pacific Homes, Toll Brothers, Village Homes of Colorado, and Weyerhaeuser Real Estate. Newhomesource.com is one of the first products released by Builder Homesite, Inc and serves the interests of new homebuilders and consumers by providing an incredible marketplace and search environment for new homes and builders. In addition to the 32 Investor Builders represented on the site today, an additional 31 builders have added their listings to newhomesource.com.
ABOUT HOMEBUILDER.COM
HomeBuilder.com(TM), the official site of the National Association of Home Builders, is ranked as the number one new homes site on the Internet. HomeBuilder.com, which drove more than one million leads to the nation's builders in 2001, offers consumers searching for new homes approximately 110,000 models, homes and built-to-suit plans for viewing. A Homestore(TM) company, HomeBuilder.com also offers homebuilding professionals an array of technology tools to maximize lead opportunities from their online marketing efforts.
About Homestore
Homestore (Nasdaq: HOMS - news) is the leading supplier of online media and technology to the real estate industry. The company operates the #1 network of home and real estate Web sites including flagship site REALTOR.com, the official Web site of the National Association of REALTORS; HomeBuilder.com(TM), the official new homes site of the National Association of Home Builders; Homestore.com(TM) Apartments Rentals; and Homestore.com(TM), a home information resource.
