Hitwise recently released its top 20 real estate Web sites report for January showing some interesting new players in the game. Hitwise, an Esperian company, who provides online intelligence and tracking services to websites, issues monthly reports on traffic and visitor information on top industry sites.

The latest report shows some of the usual fluctuations within the major players in the online real estate arena, with one company standing out – RealtyStore.com. According to the report, RealtyStore.com moved up in the rankings from 49 in October, to 35 in December and up another 15 ranks to breech the top 20 real estate Web sites.

This comes as a surprise considering RealtyStore has been a relatively obscure foreclosure listing company running in the shadows of behemoths such as RealtyTrac and Foreclosure.com – both of whom do not even rank on the Hitwise top 20.

The new rankings prompted me to check out the latest traffic data to see if my own findings confirmed those of Hitwise’s. If all reports match-up, there should be a significant spike in traffic during the period between October 2009 and January 2010 to support the jump in rankings.

According to Compete, a leading web analytics company, RealtyStore.com did not show a significant increase between October and December, in fact it exhibited a rather flat progression. It did however; show a rather unnatural spike in traffic during the month of January. This begs the question: is the company naturally growing in popularity or are they simply spending and arm and a leg on in advertising?

In a separate area of interest is the company itself. How does the company operate? What is their reputation like? In a quick reference to Ripoff Report, there were a few complaints right off the bat. The most recent complaint coming from Matt, posted on February 11, 2010, states, “I signed up for RealtyStore.com. They advertise things like find a foreclosure house for under $10,000. First off I did not see one house legitimately offered for under $10,000.” He continues, “As soon as I signed up, I started receiving lots of spam in my inbox. It is like they sold my email address to everyone… As far as I could tell the list was incredibly bad.”

Another report from a Utah user posted on December 14, 2009 describes a more serious offense, reminiscent of the ForeclosureWorld/ForeclosureStore expose. Below is a snippet:

“I signed up for a FREE 7 day trial of RealtyStore.com .. Once I logged in, I saw that the service wasn’t what I was looking for, so I opted out of there subscription services, well within the 7 day trial period, in fact it was within minutes of opting in.

They charged my credit card anyway… They promised they would refund my money, but as of today, I am still waiting.

In the mean time, I got an additional charge on my credit card from Foreclosure-Books.com for $29.95…When I called Foreclosure-Books.com, they informed me that I purchased an ebook through RealtyStore.com. I am still waiting for Foreclosure-Books.com to return my money and the ripoff, scam artists at RealtyStore.com.”

Users should be wary of any companies growing too big for their britches but rather use services that have been well established within the industry. Check reviews on foreclosure listing web sites for a more thorough analysis, or check out ForeclosureResearch for articles on various foreclosure listing sites.