The National Association of Realtors reported today that its official Web site, REALTOR.com, hit an all-time high for attracting individuals to the site in January 2002, based on data reported by Jupiter Media Metrix.

Realtor.com attracted 3.78 million unique visitors; the previous record, set in July 2001, was 3.75 million, according to Jupiter. The average unique visitor to Realtor.com viewed 52.2 unique pages during the month and spent an average of 19.2 minutes per visit. Visitors also spent a total of 167.1 million minutes on the site, more than six times greater than the closest competitor.

Jupiter also reported that Realtor.com continued its dominance in listings over its nearest competitor, which only drew 521,000 unique visitors.

"We're pleased that Realtor.com is continuing its leadership position in the minds of consumers and the hundreds of thousands of our Realtor members who support the site," said NAR President Martin Edwards Jr.

"Realtor.com continues to be the most useful place for consumers to gather information on available homes for sale and the most effective vehicle for real estate professionals to get their information exposed to the largest number of potential home buyers," said Realtor.com President Steve Ozonian.

Nielsen/NetRatings, which uses a different method to rank Web sites, also ranked Realtor.com as the number one homes-for-sale site in January. More than 4.2 million unique visitors—more than seven times as many as its nearest competitor -- visited Realtor.com. That represents a 51 percent share of the real estate category's 8.2 million unique visitors.

The average visitor spent 33.1 minutes on the site, more than four times that of the nearest competitor, according to Nielsen. Each visitor interacted with an average of 67 Web pages at Realtor.com. There was a 35 percent increase in traffic to the site last month, a substantial increase for such a large site that is already the leader in its space.

Realtor.com, operated by Homestore.com, Inc., is the official Internet site of the National Association of Realtors. Ranked as the number one homes for sale site, Realtor.com currently offers potential homebuyers more than 1.7 million new and existing homes listed for sale as well as the most brokers and agents to contact.