With both the US housing market and their rank in real estate searches slumping, Yahoo has revamped its real estate site and ad unit to include partnerships with Prudential and Zillow in hopes of gaining local market share.

Some of the new features of Yahoo's real estate portal include US home valuations (made available through Zillow partnership), data on over 3 million properties (from Prudential) and aerial neighborhood views through a Yahoo Maps feature.

Yahoo, MSN and Google have been showing quite a lot of interest in the local real estate markets over the last six months. Google Base now allow users to post real estate classifieds for free in attempts to break into local markets. According to Reuters, MSN has continued to gain ground with its real estate site, rising from the 10th most visited real estate site to number 8 over the last year. Zillow itself has raised $57 million in two rounds of funding this year while still in beta.

Even with the high interest by the major search companies and venture capitalists online, it's not apparent that the U.S. housing market shares the optimism. All indications point to a declining housing market in terms of pendings, resells and new constructions.