On January 27, 2021, Canada’s No. 1 real estate platform, REALTOR.ca, broke a milestone when we hit one million visitors in one day.
That’s news in itself, but what’s even more encouraging is the trend we’ve seen since then: REALTOR.ca visitors continue to grow and are up nearly 100% from the same time last year when daily visitors hovered just above 500,000.
“It comes down to a continued demand for real estate,” says Justin Wah Kan, Associate Director, REALTOR.ca. “We saw the real estate sector grow, but so did we. So, in plain English, the pie got bigger and so did our piece of it.”
Users of REALTOR.ca in 2021 are up 71% compared to this time last year (January 1 to February 17), bringing that total to more than 15.9 million visitors.
So what does this all mean for REALTORS®?
More opportunities to make money. The number of direct leads sent to REALTORS® from REALTOR.ca is up 92.1% to nearly 550,000. Phone leads, where perspective buyers and sellers actually call a REALTOR® as opposed to emailing one (generally seen as a higher quality lead) are up nearly 115% compared to last year.
The number of sessions on our site has also ballooned by 88% this year.
“We saw our numbers grow last year, but nothing has been as dramatic as this year,” Wah Kan says, adding, “there’s been a significant increase in digital interest in real estate as more people are at home searching for properties.”
If you think CREA is done improving REALTOR.ca, think again. Wah Kan says people should stay tuned for more news later this year about enhancements.
