Calculated Risk: Sad News: Tanta Passes Away
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RIP Tanta
I got my beta invite to the PlayStation Home last night. Home, for those of you who don’t have a PS3, is Sony’s attempt to create a 3D environment where gamers can congregate and connect with each other. Much like Second Life, Home lets you create an Avatar, sets you up with you an apartment and then lets you begin to interact with others inside this virtual world.
While still in its infancy, Home definitely looks interesting. And there are some definite indications that Sony plans on monetizing this virtual real estate.
Here are a couple snaps I took.
In game advertising (IGA) is a nascent market, but one that is projected to hit $732 million by 2010. Just as an example, in the recent election, President-elect Obama reportedly spent $44K for billboard ads in the popular Burnout driving game (see Obama’s in-game ad bill).
Granted, this kind of spend probably doesn’t make sense for most real estate brands. But for the right company, looking for the right vehicle to reach the 18-34 male demographic, IGA may make sense.
Personally, I know that’s where I’m spending the majority of my free time these days. It’s not watching TV or reading the newspaper.
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Virtual Real Estate Makes a Come Back
My employer Inman News has embarked on a major editorial project over the next few months focusing on the future of the real estate industry.
I’d love to hear from FOREM readers what they think that might look like. You’ll score a pass to the upcoming Real Estate Connect conference in New York for your efforts.
We are also calling for essays that focus the future of real estate. Write no more than 400 words on how to reinvent the real estate industry and revive the housing market. Pick a category — brokers, agents, technology, title or lending — or discuss the entire industry. Our editorial team will review the essays, publish many of them, and hand out a $500 check to the author of the best essay. Also, the authors of all essays published in full will get a free pass (valid for new registrations only) to the upcoming Real Estate Connect conference. Send your essays to future@inman.com by Dec. 31, 2008.
Read more on reinventing the real estate industry.
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The Future of Real Estate
A big thanks to Real Pro Systems for supporting FOREM this month.
Real Pro specializes in web sites and marketing solutions for the real estate industry and have a pretty comprehensive internet marketing solution for Realtors. Their Gold3 package includes a web site, blog and all kinds of integrated lead cultivation and drip marketing tools designed by agents for agents.
And the best thing is they have graciously set up an exclusive offer for FOREM readers this month…
If your looking to retire your old website, you can trade it in today and get up to a $400 credit towards a new set up from Real Pro Systems. Add any of the add-ons and you’ll get an additional $100 off. Not a bad deal.
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Sponsor Shout Out: Real Pro Systems
One of my favorite online real estate search tools, Estately expanded in to two new markets today; Greater Chicago and Long Island, New York. This marks the first markets outside of the West Coast for the Seattle based search site — Estately previously only served Washington, Oregon and California.
This means Estately, which pulls all of its listings from its relationships with the local MLSes, now has over 330,000 homes for sale on its site.
Another welcome feature in this latest release is the addition of past home sales information to every listing. You’ll now be able to see the entire sales history on any listed home to see if has recently changed hands and if so, for how much. This new feature is powered through a relationship with Cyberhomes.
With these two new markets, Estately is taking big strides to move beyond being simply a regional player. Even if it still has a long way to go to rival the reach of the big national sites, there’s no question the underdog is starting to lose its puppy teeth.
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Estately Expands Eastwards
Neighborhood boundaries are a fluid thing. My definition what encompasses my neighborhood (Multnomah Village in Portland) may vary greatly from the person across street.
It’s also one of the Holy Grails to online search. The ability to confine a search to a particular neighborhood. Roost does this particularly well, as does Estately and to a lesser degree Zillow.
Zillow also took the step of creating a set of neighborhood boundaries (over 7000 of them) that they released earlier this year in Shapefile format.
Another effort is slowly taking shape (literally) however. The popular photo-sharing site Flickr is also releasing Shapefiles of neighborhoods, using the data it collects from the geotagged photos in its database to accumulate a collective definition of what makes a neighborhood.
The project, which is in early Alpha, can best be viewed on the mashup site Neighborhood Boundaries. Simply punch in your neighborhood name (or city name) and see how the boundaries are being defined in your neck of the woods.
Again, this is early Alpha, so many markets won’t have much coverage. But the possibility of user-defined neighborhood boundaries is intriguing to say the least.
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These Are The Photos in Your Neighborhood
Taking a page from the its search portal cousins and perhaps even its cross-town competitor Redfin, the new Windermere web site launched today, with a simple search box up front and center. Simple, slick and straight to the point.
Broker web pages are often cluttered with all kinds of extraneous information; programs on this and that. Windermere cuts right to the chase and puts the power of its IDX driven search tool up front and center. Just what I’m looking for.
Better still, the search experience gets even better once you dive in. Results return speedily are mapped quickly onto a Microsoft Virtual Earth map. Clicking on a individual listing and you get a nice big picture as well as the ability to read the entire property details, view all existing photos and print out a ready-to-roam flyer.
I suspect this is the model for the brokerage web site moving forward. A simple, interactive online destination that supplies the consumer with the complete search experience. If Windermere takes this to the next level and white-labeled this tool for its agents, they’d be on to a winning combination.
Windermere serves the Western US, in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington state and Wyoming.
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New Face for Windermere
For real estate buyers right now it’s a crazy time. The fear of making the wrong decision can be paralyzing at times, so having access to information is critical.
I thought I’d share some of the tools I’ve been using in my own search.
What’s Happening on the Ground?
Trulia generates its reports from its internal database of property listings (most of which are pulled from its relationships with real estate brokers). Inventory is admittedly incomplete, but it’ll give you a good sense of the trajectories of the local markets.
Cyberhomes, on the other hand, gets its data from its records on over
100 million US properties. Their neighborhood overviews are a little slow to load but can give you a overview of what a zip code is doing and see the overall direction of the market.
Get the Big Picture?
Altos Research
Altos reports are real time market intelligence that deep dive in to what’s really going on in your market, right now. As a buyer, you can also get a snapshot of the trends in any given market. Altos founder Mike Simonsen claims their reports lead the Case/Shiller Index by three months.
Foreclosures
Understanding the volume of foreclosures, bank owned properties and auctions that are hitting your is key to gauging where prices might be headed in your local market.
The 800lb gorilla in the foreclosure space. RealtyTrac has a fantastic amount of information despite a clunky web site. There is a monthly charge to have access to this data - but it’s well worth it, especially if you’re looking at these opportunities seriously.
California buyers may want to look at ForeclosureRadar, a “professional grade” search tool that tracks all foreclosure activity in the state. Designed mostly for Realtors and investors, it’s a fantastic tool that gives you unparalleled data and analysis. Too bad it’s not available outside of the Golden State, yet.
Bonus - Find Homes on Auction
Also, if you’re interested in getting homes at auction, check out Zetabid.com. Right now they are running auctions in California, Florida and Illinois.
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5 Great Sites to Help You Better Understand This Crazy Market
MRIS, the MLS which covers DC, Maryland, Pennsylvania and the Virginias and is the nation’s largest MLS, today launched HomesDatabase 2.0, its new public-facing web site.
It’s a pretty impressive effort. HomeDatabase takes its design cues from some of the big listing portals (Zillow and Trulia) but merges it with the extensive listing data available from its own databases, and effectively beating them at their own game.
Though, as pointed out by Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman (who himself operates in MRIS’ service area) in a comment on Techcrunch, it’s not the total market picture. HomesDatabase excludes foreclosures, bank-owned properties or for sale by owner from its results.
Despite that shortcoming, it is still a very nice search experience. Some of the notable features present in HomesDatabase are, foremost, its support for semantic search. Like Dothomes, you can do a natural-language query on the site, like this search I did for a colonial in Annapolis with a pool.
Personally, I also really liked the gallery view - which puts all the properties side by side and allows you to evaluate multiple properties from an esthetic point of view. HomesDatabase also apparently allows you to put selected properties into a “comparison engine” - but I was unable to figure out how to get to this feature.
Another nice touch were the “Amazon-like” recommendations on the listing pages of similar type properties viewed by other users.
As a pure search tool, Home Database drives all traffic back to the listing brokerage or the listing agent for free. MRIS believes that by creating a compelling destination it can help its members better service their customers, the consumers while, at the same time, consumers are looking for a trusted third party to help them find their next home.
MRIS chairman Adam Cockey puts it this way; “Consumers get easy access to all the listings without advertising. And real estate brokers and agents in our market get free exposure and traffic from a site that’s run by their own MLS.”
Not a bad deal in my mind.
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MRIS Takes on the Search Sites
Got a map based real estate site? Vancouver-based lat49 lets you monetize that asset with its geo-targeted advertising network.
It’s pretty simple really, as a publisher you simply sign up to join their network, incorporate their API and then begin earning ad revenue passively. Think of it like Google Adsense for maps.
It raises the possibility for brokerages (many of whom have invested heavily in map-based real estate search tools) to develop an alternative source of revenue and offset some of those costs, by being able to bring advertising directly to their maps.
What would make this offering a real winner, would be the option to offer premium map-based ad space to ancillary service providers, vendors and even local merchants. The key aspect would be to be able to control who and what advertisements would appear on your site.
In addition, Lat49 also give real estate companies (even individual brokers or agents) a unique opportunity to create regionally-based branding campaigns across multiple web properties by embedding ads at a local or even hyperlocal level.
Lat49 gives advertiser several IAB approved sizes including a 728×90 Leaderboard, a 300×250 Medium Rectangle, and a 468×60 Full Banner ad.
Sites currently using this technology include Hotpads in the US and HomeZilla (see Neighborhood Search Comes Back) in Canada.
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Lat49 Lets You Monetize Your Maps
HouseValues (SOLD), the 10 year-old lead generation company, shed it’s skin this morning and repositioned itself as a marketing and technology solutions company.
The new company is going to be called Market Leader and brings together a number of HouseValues’ recent acquisitions, including RealtyGenerator web site and CRM tool, under a new roof. They also have a minority stake in ActiveRain (see ActiveRain secures $2.75 million from HouseValues).
Along with the rebranding, they also launched two new products; Growth Leader, aimed at helping real estate agents manage their online advertising spending and Team Leader, which will help agents manage their teams.
Market Leader will trade on the NASDAQ until the symbol LEDR and will be featured in the closing-bell ceremony on November 24.
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HouseValues Retools as Market Leader
Dash, the web enabled GPS unit is slashing 50 jobs and exiting the hardware business, according to GigaOM.
The futuristic unit pulled data from the ‘net and mashed it it up with turn-by-turn directions - a pretty slick idea, all things considered. In real estate they had deals going with content partners Coldwell Banker (see Dash GPS Get Real Estate Search) and Trulia (see Trulia Goes Mobile, Adds Feeds).
Mobile real estate search and location-based navigation technologies seem to me to be the perfect marriage. Personally, I’d love to be able to have the ability to output the results of a property search and then have the whole viewing tour guided via GPS.
I think the real problem in this case was not the concept, but the execution. Standalone units like the Dash are quickly being outpaced by smart devices like the iPhone and Blackberry Bold, which already incorporate GPS and do not require additional fees (beyond their monthly data plans).
And while applications on each of those platforms are not quite there yet to do a multi-stop property tour, they’re close (see iPhone real estate app showdown).
Dash seems to have recognized this, and by retooling their business for B2B, we may still see their technology show up in onboard navigation systems and other devices someday.
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Dash?s Hopes Get? Well, Dashed
This week Redfin shuttered its hyperlocal Sweet Digs blogs in San Francisco, Boston, San Diego and Orange County.
Sweet Digs Seattle is still alive but it looks like it has turned into a more traditional brokerage blog; now just advertising Redfin’s new listings and open houses.
Sweet Digs was initially founded to replicate the formula pioneered by successful local blogs like Brownstoner and Curbed. Hire independent bloggers, blog about real estate in each market, create light yet compelling content, build a community and grow an affinity amongst consumers for the Redfin brand.
Presumably the expense of running the blogs was just too big for them to bear in this market. So they’re now retooling the blogs to focus on simply providing hard data for each of the markets they serve.
As a creative experiment in social media, it’s a shame to see them go.
[h/t 360Digest]
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Sweet Digs is No More
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links for 2008-10-29
Properazzi, the international property search portal based in Barcelona, Spain, announced today it has changed its name to Enormo.
They felt “that the new name will reflect our ambitions better and support our continuing growth”.
I actually liked the old name a lot (see Properazzi Takes a Snapshot of Europe’s Real Estate Market) and the new name doesn’t do all that much for me, yet. It feels kind of generic, and unrelated to real estate — but then again, who knew what a Zillow was before they launched.
Enormo claims to be the largest property listings web site in the world. They have over 2 million monthly visitors and lists over 6 million properties in 50 countries worldwide, including the USA.
US brokers and agents wanting to reach their international audience are encouraged by the company to submit their listing feeds.
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Go Big or Go Home
