Real estate agents and homeowners who buy classified advertisements to sell houses in the Richmond Times-Dispatch can get their listings highlighted on a national real estate Web site.

Media General Inc., the parent company of The Times-Dispatch, has signed a deal to partner with Zillow.com for five years to offer the option.

The Zillow Web site has information on about 2.2 million homes for sale across the country.

Zillow also provides an estimated value on 70 million homes, most of which are not for sale.

The Times-Dispatch will be one of the first newspapers in the country to offer the online advertising option with Zillow. The program starts here June 23. It will be rolled out to the other 24 daily Media General newspapers over the next four months.

"I'm very excited about the opportunity this brings to the marketplace," said Michael Fibison, general manager of inRich.com, the newspaper's Web site. "As we learned through our partnership with Yahoo, national companies bring technological advancements, Internet distribution and expertise."

Media General's agreement last August with Yahoo Inc. gives people who use inRich.com access through a link to local, regional and national job listings through Yahoo! HotJobs.

The newspaper Web site currently has a Home Seeker option that allows agents to pay to put their listings online. Home Seeker will continue to operate until later this year, when Zillow will replace it, Fibison said.

Zillow, besides being national in scope, is easier to navigate and search and contains more information, Fibison said. Seven publishing companies, including E.W. Scripps Co., Morris Communications Co. and Hearst Communications Inc., have signed on with Zillow. In all, 137 papers have signed to offer the service. It is unknown when the newspapers will offer it.

Here is how it works.

Homeowners and real estate agents buy a classified advertisement to sell a house in the newspaper and, for an extra $30, the listing will be featured on Zillow.com for 30 days.

People can place their listings on the Web site for free, but with this arrangement, the ads will be highlighted on the site, arranged by region and not mixed in with all the others.

On the site, for example, more than 2,800 houses are listed for sale in the Richmond area. The site contains the street address, an aerial photograph, square footage, number of bedrooms and baths, the year built and Zillow's "zestimate," or estimated value.

Mark Eamer, director of business development for Zillow, said data are compiled from counties and cities and information traditionally sold to mortgage companies.

Values are estimates because there is no way the Seattle-based company would know if a house had been renovated.

"We have never been in the house. We don't know if you have done a kitchen remodel," Eamer said.

Write-ups on the houses for sale would include information about upgrades.

Eamer said 5.2 million visitors go monthly to the Web site to research homes and look for data.

"It's a tremendous national footprint to complement the local market," he said.
Contact Carol Hazard at (804) 775-8023 or chazard@timesdispatch.com.