This is the fourth acquisition for Zillow, a real estate listing site that boasts over 110 million postings of homes for sale, for rent, and those not currently on the market, and connects potential home buyers and renters with potential lenders on the Zillow Mortgage Marketplace. The company switched out CEOs in 2010, moving current CEO Spencer Rascoff into the spot, and went public in July 2011.

Buyfolio allows homeowners to create a database of potential listings of interest and then share those listings with a broker or between spouses, who can add notes to the listings and update with information. Buyfolio also provides listings and information on the NYC housing market, which can be added to a user’s database. The company has versions available for the Apple iPhone and iPad, as well as Android, and has a suite of products intended for real estate brokers as well.

Zillow said it plans to offer Buyfolio’s online and mobile products, and in September, Rascoff spoke at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference on his company’s success at monetizing on mobile, nothing the 14 different apps they had available.

Earlier this month, the company’s stock took a tumble after disclosures of communication between Rascoff and the Securities and Exchange Commission that questioned how the company was reporting its sales, although analysts said the communication wasn’t necessarily cause for concern, CNN Money reported.

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Some of the more poignant thoughts from our Mobilize speakers exemplify this theme, so here are a few I thought worth sharing:

• Don’t count out HTML5 just yet. Mark Zuckerberg may not have been happy with HTML 5 for Facebook, but Spencer Rascoff, CEO of Zillow said, ”In my mind, we’re moving more towards a world where apps are basically bookmarks for mobile websites.” Native apps will surely have a place in the future — and its users are more highly engaged, says Rascoff – but mobile web technology is still improving.
• The “point of sale” is now everywhere. While near-field communications (NFC) payment methods haven’t yet taken off significantly, alternative solutions that align more with traditional payments are becoming popular. Square COO, Keith Rabois noted that “35 million unique Americans have paid with Square,” or roughly 11.1 percent of the 314 million population in the US. Take into account that a number of the total population is too young to actually make purchases and the adoption figure rises even higher. Coincidentally, I had my first Square experience on the way to Mobilize; my taxi drive used it with his Galaxy S III smartphone to process my fare from airport to GigaOm HQ.
• Video is becoming a primary mobile activity. The granddaddy of all video sites, Google’s YouTube, is now delivering 25 percent of its content to mobile devices and the figure is likely to rise in tandem with mobile broadband subscriptions. In Korea, for example, which has 91 mobile broadband subscribers for every 100 people, YouTube’s mobile delivery is closer to 50 percent, said Shiva Rajaraman, YouTube’s director of product management. This means we’ll see a greater need for faster mobile broadband, offline playback support and improved video compression technologies in the future.
• Connected homes will only appeal if the solutions are simple and add value. As a do-it-yourselfer, my own connected home is a mishmash of networks, protocols, products and interfaces. “Most consumers really, really, really don’t want to be integrators,” said Bill Brown, GM of converged consumer solutions for Motorola Mobility. Watch for more plug-and-play modules that talk seamlessly with each other instead of more complex, centralized home servers for connected homes.
• Developers need to consider the broadband their software needs. Third party apps that eat through gobs of mobile broadband could passed over for similar apps that use less data. “You want an app that does 50 miles to the gallon, not 10,” suggested T-Mobile CTO, Neville Ray. As our mobile software gains more complex functionality, it’s important that developers temper the need for cloud access and even consider offline use-cases if possible.

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“The companies that are really struggling are the ones for whom the mobile monetization is a nuisance for the user,” said CEO Spencer Rascoff at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference in San Francisco. “But with real estate, the mobile ad unit actually enhances the user experience.”

Rascoff pointed out that unlike social media sites or areas where mobile ads are just distracting for users, real estate sites are areas where they’re looking to purchase something and find information, so the advertising is a good fit rather than an annoyance. The company, which went public in July 2011, has optimized its product for mobile, rolling out 14 different apps for phones and tablets.

“That wasn’t easy, it took a lot of brute force to get a 100-plus person company to get away from desktop to mobile,” Rascoff said, noting that it meant changing the company’s name and working on prioritizing the mobile web throughout the company. “It took a year or two to find our footing from a design experience,” he said. “But it was easier for us to get into mobile because of our category.”

In talking about the race for mobile, Rascoff said he thinks some companies have actually moved too fast in trying to adapt for advertising, when they don’t yet have a total grasp on how it will fit with their business.

“I think the most common mistake would be overzealous monetization from mobile,” he said.

Check out the rest of our Mobilize 2012 coverage here, and the live stream can be found here.

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New Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff

Though trying to make a positive news story out of a CEO stepping down is a round-peg-square-hole kind of problem, Barton maintains that Zillow’s prospects are great. In fact, the company is announcing it’s profitable for the first time today, and keeps hinting it wants to go public. Barton founded Expedia, and served as its president and CEO through its IPO and subsequent purchase, so he’s qualified to run Zillow — but he said he’s too distracted to do so.

“It’s not like I don’t like operations and running stuff,” Barton said in an interview today. “It’s that I like to do a lot of things, and the CEO of a company with 200 employees and the potential to be the biggest brand in real estate should be somebody that’s completely focused and driven.”

Rascoff has been at Zillow five years and was named COO two years ago. In addition to Zillow’s content business of providing home sales and rental information, the company’s mortgage marketplace is a fast-growing product, Rascoff said. (However, LendingTree sued Zillow and others last week for patent infringement of its system for pairing borrowers and lenders.) Zillow reported 12.5 million unique users in August (a year-over-year increase of 41 percent) and said it sees 15-to-20 percent of weekend traffic from its popular mobile apps. Both Rascoff and Barton said they expected Zillow to go public, but wouldn’t set a timeline.

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