Homestore.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: HOMS) attracted a total of more than 8.4 million unique users to its family of Web sites, an all-time high for both the company and the home and real estate category, according to February 2001 home/work panel data just released from Nielsen/NetRatings. The Nielsen/Net Ratings survey is the industry's first to include consolidated traffic numbers from real estate Web sites that Homestore.com, Inc. acquired last month from Cendant Corporation, including Move.com and Rent.Net, which were primary factors for the 23% increase, or approximately 1.6 million additional unique users.

Additionally, Nielsen/NetRatings reported that 153.2 million total minutes were spent on Homestore.com Web sites in February, which was more than twelve times the total minutes of the nearest competitor. Nielsen/NetRatings also noted that including the URL's for Move.com and Rent.Net, the Homestore.com family of sites now rank among the most-trafficked Internet sites in the U.S. - 21st overall in page views and 35th overall in unique users.

Separately, February 2001 numbers from Media Metrix, which will report consolidated figures for Homestore.com and Move.com sites next month, confirmed the strong increase in unique usership and total minutes. When Homestore.com and Move.com figures from Media Metrix's February 2001 survey are added together and duplication is removed, the combined properties collectively drew approximately 7 million unique users, an increase of 37% or approximately 1.8 million users from Homestore.com sites alone in January. A total of 127.5 million minutes were spent on the combined Homestore.com and Move.com properties, according to Media Metrix, or more than eight times the closest competition.

Published: March 14, 2001

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