Archive for the 'Real Estate Technology' Category
Zillow Lands a Big Listing Fish Too
February 5th, 2008 Categories: Homes and Land, Real Estate News, Real Estate Technology, third party destination sites, widget the web, zillow
Drew reports of Zillows newest splash into the property listing pool by hooking up with Homes and Land.
The push toward an advertised to available property listing tipping point continues…It’s a horse race folks.
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If MicroHoo Happens, Googlia Should Follow
February 5th, 2008 Categories: Real Estate Technology, googlia
In the spirit of welding together industry power names (MicroHoo), I can see it coming…Google acquires Trulia. If MicroHoo Happens, then ‘Googlia’ should follow. They play in the same revenue sandbox, share a common mantra, Trulia is approaching a tipping point in the available to advertised listing ratio (a 20% market share for any company in any industry is big, using traditional economics), and this would give Google the ability to spit back at MicroHoo in the re.net advertising vertical.
Googlia, while better than Google and Trulia apart, would still fall well short of an acceptable place to effectively search real estate listings IMHO, but…
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A National MLS Won’t Work, But a Loose Network of Savvy Real Estate Professionals Could
February 5th, 2008 Categories: Real Estate Technology, national mls, third party destination sites, widget the web
Trulia, Zillow, Propsmart, Roost, DotHomes, Terrabitz (the list of contenders goes on and on) are some of the players in a race to become the new ‘National MLS Solution’. Initially a proponent of ‘anything except the current system’, I’ve sat back and watched hundreds of millions of dollars be sunk into the promise of a single website with all the listings in an easy to navigate user interface, only to be terribly disappointed.
I just don’t see any of them as an answer to the most important question revolving around online property search for every consumer:
Who’s got all of the listings?
I’ve talked with many real estate professionals about ‘working with’ Trulia, Zillow et.al, using their tools, what they like and what they don’t. Opinion varies from ‘just a novelty’ to ‘part of my marketing strategy’ to ‘F-em’ :). The most compelling and consistent comment I get is that none of these sites contain anywhere near 100% listing penetration for a given MLS’ designated area of coverage.
During Inman NYC 2008 Teresa Boardman and I were chatting about various topics within the re.net world, one being Trulia’s recent releases. Teresa mentioned that after doing some research she found that listing penetration on sites like Trulia et. al. typically maxed out at ~20% of total available inventory.
‘I don’t understand or agree with the need for a national real estate web site at all. Most home buyers just look in one geographic location and do not need to see listings in all states.’
Teresa goes on to state:
‘Last time I checked both Trulia and Zillow had only a small percentage of the homes that are listed in the MLS listed. I guess since there are so many web sites with IDX solutions making all the listings widely available I don’t get the point of these national type sites that just have a few of the listings in a given area. I will go as far as to say that the sites are doing the consumer a disservice.’
So if I’m a consumer and I want to see EVERY PROPERTY thats currently on the market, none of these sites come close to fulfilling my needs, as a matter of fact I’ll probably have to go to all of them and still wonder if I’m missing out on that house. If this is indeed the case, which it is, I’m better off visiting a local rePros IDX fueled site. They may not be quite as sexy, actually downright ugly, but at least I know I can find far more listings than any of the (Third Party Destination Sites) TPD’s out there today. I also don’t want to be pitched from every sidebar and header of every page…the noise is deafening.
If I’m a rePro, I don’t want potential clients leaving my site, period. TPD’s (must) pull consumers back to their site to access a majority of features to quench their advertising based biz model…i.e. they offer some cursory level watered down application thats true purpose is to pull the consumer back the the TPD’s main site, akin to an arsenic laced olive branch offered to the rePro. ‘Here, take this cool little application stick it on your site and we both win!’ Ehhh, wrong. Although the intention may be positive, the result often is not in favor of the rePro.
The problem with the cornucopia of TPD property listing sites ultimately lies in the ways they attempt to achieve true ‘long tail’ property search: Their business model and/or their aggregation method. RePros don’t (won’t) like to give a TPD their lisitngs, only to be charged to feature them (this is the current MLS’ problem)…thus this model should be cast into eternal purgatory, floating rather meaninglessly between failure and marginal profitability, probably hoping they get acquired by MicroHoo...Secondly, rePros don’t like their listings scraped (for obvious reasons)…if a biz model relies on raw scraping, it’ll be scraping up loose change off the street to survive.
So where is the middle ground of killer technology and rePro listing penetration? I think BlueRoof is headed down the right path. Technology (Solvent) + rePro (Solute) = A Solution…one that both consumers and professionals can benefit from.
If like minded rePros (socially) networked together using some of todays (and tomorrows) killer apps, the TPD listing sites (1.0) value propositions could evaporate overnight…The open API that killed the Third Party Destination site…Et tu Brute?
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Google, The Core Driver Behind SEO Strategies, Looks to Become the King of Social Networking Optimization (SNO) Too.
January 21st, 2008 Categories: Open Social Applications, Real Estate Technology, Social Networking
I penned this post on another site back in November, alas I want to continue the thread of this conversation here on The XBroker. Hopefully the big G doesnt penalize me too bad for duplicate content…
Google, the core driver behind SEO strategies, looks to become the King of Social Networking Optimization (SNO) as well.
“The web is more interesting when you can build apps that easily interact with your friends and colleagues. But with the trend towards more social applications also comes a growing list of site-specific APIs that developers must learn.
OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds.”
‘Learn Once, Write Everywhere’ is the core message of this ‘new’ architecture proposed and fostered by Google. Using the most general of statements, Googles latest release will have broad reaching effects regarding how the web ‘works’.
According to Google, OpenSocial is a set of three types of API’s that allow programmers to access core functions and information that are common to ’social networks’:
- Profile Information. Info about you.
- Friends Information. Info about your friends.
- Activities. Whats everyone doing, reading, buying, looking at, playing with..?
Although the three API’s above look pretty ‘So What-ish…’, thats really the beauty of it all, they’re blatantly vanilla yet almost infinitely scaleable considering the amount, quality, and how information can be shared. There are little to no restrictions from a programmers standpoint, it’s a wide open and flat playing field to develop under.In the real estate and mortgage verticals, today the question is:
‘Whats the big deal?’ since there are no succinct applications or service providers amongst the initial group of partners that clearly look to benefit ‘Real Estate’ or ‘Mortgage’. I’ll reserve specific examples for the next posting, but I do have some general broad canvas thoughts…
In a past post, I spoke of the evolution of Widgetry (or Gadgetry) or, shareable applications designed to increase the functionality and share-ability of a web-site via SNO. I’ve also touched on the importance of SNO.
Google has kept things ‘Really Simple Stupid’, allowing the collective brain power of programmers with almost any skill level to develop an application or widget using OpenSocials API’s. With just a few tweaks as to how applications/widgets are developed, programmers who choose to integrate OpenSocials API’s won’t need to learn or develop new (mark-up) languages to make their shareable wares work on…pick your web-platform…
As stated above, OpenSocial isn’t ‘just another social network’, it creates a common platform that allows independently produced applications/widgets to work on and connect with multiple platforms.
This should allow for very rapid development cycles as well as much faster adoption rates for popular (and useful) applications. If you’ve used FaceBook you have seen the dynamic of rapid application development in action, which is also why Facebook is the rage in IT (and VC) land. OpenSocial one ups Facebook by not restricting such application development to only their platform. Just think, you could soon be able to throw sheep at your peers outside of FaceBook! (OK, bad joke.)
What becomes possible using OpenSocial relevant to Real Estate service providers? Ponder for a second the richness of information that could be called upon, seamed together, and shared between ‘network hubs’, or like groups of professional peers, running relevant applications (widgets et.al.) using OpenSocial’s framework. Listings, potential consumers, existing clients, vendors, mortgage rates, broad demographic data, hyper-local opinions and information…
Today, real estate agents, mortgage professionals, brokerages et. al. are powerful and robust information network hubs, however, they still remain fractured and relatively disparate from each other….Applications designed to seam these hubs together for the benefit of the professional end-user as well as the ever discerning long tail driven consumer are already in the works, OpenSocial looks to have shortened the learning and adoption curve of such applications substantially.
Also See:
Social Networking Maintenance Made Easier
What Does OpenSocial Mean to Real Estate?
Why Google Turned into a Social Butterfly
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ActiveRain secures $2.75M in Financing From HouseValues
January 21st, 2008 Categories: Active Rain, Real Estate Technology, Social Networking
ActiveRain secures $2.75M in Financing From HouseValues
Sans opinion, I wanted to throw up a quick congratulations to Jon, Matt, et. al. over at ActiveRain, the premiere social network for real estate related professionals.
The life of an entrepreneur is filled with many peaks and valleys, so I’m glad to see their success in a vital area for any propspering business. They’re great guys and deserve this great news.
ActiveRain has built quite a robust network via hard core boot-strapping. It’ll be interesting to see what they’re capable of with some cash in their pockets…
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