StreetEasy Philadelphia: Gone As Quickly As It Came


When I met with StreetEasy reps Daniel Sultan and Deborah Conway at La Colombe on 19th Street in March, things were looking good for the real estate website’s Philadelphia launch. The Soho-based online tool for the New York market offers listings, development news, sold-stuff buzz, and much more. It’s an invaluable tool.

Despite the fact that I was embarrassed to be eating a heavy pastry while Sultan and Conway were both observing Passover, we had an energetic meeting during which we discussed neighborhood boundaries, ways to connect with the community, and StreetEasy’s vision for making Philadelphia one of its successes.

That didn’t happen. In August Zillow bought StreetEasy for $50 million and quickly ditched the Philadelphia site, which was still in soft-launch mode. (Zillow also got rid of the Miami site and the D.C. site.) In Zillow’s third-quarter earnings report, released a few days ago, StreetEasy’s revenue was finally revealed: $3.4 million for the first six months of 2013. According to The Real Deal:

The figure put the New York City-based listings provider on track to exceed the $5.6 million in revenues it made in 2012, Zillow reported. Its net income for the first half of this year was just $178,000, the company said. In 2012, the 34-employee company generated $790,000 in net earnings, Zillow said.

It sounds like Zillow is being smart about bringing StreetEasy’s focus back to New York. The company’s CEO said, “We see very significant revenue opportunities from New York. But [StreetEasy] is not yet fully monetized.” No one wants it to be the 3rd Ward of real estate websites.

Below, the pre-Zillow StreetEasy interface, which I happen to think was much more fun. Oh well.

StreetEasy brought in $3.4M in first half of 2013 [The Real Deal]