Buyers and Sellers: Help is on the way… August 24, 2005
I’m pretty sure that many real estate agents wouldn’t want to hear this, but the real estate industry has been very effective at protecting their own self-interest at the expense of home buyers and sellers. There are so many useful tools that could be built, but valuable real estate data is hidden behind thick walls! But rather than focus on the problems of the industry, I’d like to spend a few minutes talking about the future…
If you’ve been reading Rain City Guide long enough, you probably know that last May I put together the first home search (“gHomes”) that was built on top of Google Maps. However, after a few months, Google developed an API that made this type of search pretty easy to make and after an update broke my tool, I haven’t bothered to fix it. However, my lack of enthusiasm for a better home (MLS) search has not dimmed… Rather, I’ve been working with a few other programmers to build a much better system that will hopefully provide a better user-experience and more useful information than the typical MLS search. When we’ve got something ready to show, you can be sure that the readers of this blog will be the first to know.
One of the best parts of hacking into gmaps pretty early on is that I got to meet a bunch of developers who were putting together some of the most innovative projects. For example, at the Where2.0 conference in San Francisco, I got to meet people like Paul Rademacher of Housing Maps and Chris Sloat of BusMonster. Knowing my interest in google maps and real estate, these contacts have kept me up-to-date on some interesting applications.
With that background, I’m happy to state (on the record!) that in less than one year, buyers and sellers will have a slew of fundamentally better home searching options! I’d love to be part of the team that develops one of those tools, but even if my tool isn’t everything I’m hoping it will be, then someone else is currently building the tools that will transform the industry!
This doesn’t mean that the real estate industry won’t put up a fight, but I’ve heard of numerous ideas that will have agents clamoring to be part of this new client-oriented real estate industry. I am a firm believer that the successful agents of the future will find ways to turn real estate data into useful information instead of relying on a system that hides the useful information behind a wall.
I’m aware of a few very interesting tools being developed, and considering that almost all of them are in “stealth” mode, I’m under the impression that there are many more that I do NOT know about. Based on hours of conversations with tech enthusiasts and the solid resumes of their founders, these two real-estate oriented start-ups show particular promise:
It is interesting that both of these real estate start-ups are founded by people who helped successfully transform the travel industry into an on-line powerhouse that completely limited the influence of travel agents. Pete Flint of RealWide did it in Europe with LastMinute.com and Richard Barton did it with Expedia. (Parallels between the travel agents and real estate agents are easy to make, but are WAY too simplistic. A real estate transaction is much more complex do to the all the legal issues associated with buying a piece of land.) I’m sure that both Pete (RealWide) and Richard (Zillow) are aware that the fight to break into the real estate industry will be much tougher! (and potentially much more profitable!)
Do you have some more information on either of these start-ups? Do you know of another real estate site in stealth mode? I’d love to hear about it!
Check out these related posts:
- The State of Real Estate Search
- Agents: Are you prepared?
- Playing With Rain City Guide’s Real Estate Search Tool
Article Tags>> Buyer-Information | gHomes | information | MLS | Moving-to-Seattle | Seller-Information | site | Trulia | Zillow
- Posted in : Buyer Information, General Real Estate, Moving to Seattle, Seller Information, Site Info
- Author : Dustin
Comments»
Today, I received an email from someone who is building another site still in stealth mode (name unknown…) that will initial focus on providing appraisal information for home buyers in the Seattle area. Interesting stuff!
greetings,
i am proud to announce that our organization has been developing, for many many months now, the most consumer friendly real estate community called sellsius. our goal is to debut sellsius @ the 2005 TRIPLE PLAY Realtor Convention & Trade Expo. this event will take place in atlantic city, new jersey on December 6.7.8.
our solutions will benefit the entire real estate community…
our official press release will be available soon….
cheers,
-rdb
rdb,
I’d be interested to learn more… Can you at least send a link to a demo?
dustin,
hello. we’ll have more info available soon. most likely by the realtor conference in san francisco.
cheers,
-rdb
<shameless_plug>
Propsmart will be interesting.
</shameless_plug>
ps. Love your blog. Keep up the great coverage of the industry.
The rotating quotes on Propsmart are a lot of fun!
[...] on Real Estate Search Technologies: Analysis of NeighborhoodScout’s tool. (Aug 24) Buyers and Sellers: Help is on the Way: Discussion on the potential of sites like Zillow and Realwide (not Tr [...]
Have you checked at online real estate site - HomePages.com?
I’ve written a few articles about homepages. Here is the latest: Better Late than Never
[...] ’t take anything for granted and put together a whole new real estate search engine! I mentioned that this site was coming out a few weeks ago, and the implementation lives up to everything Pete [...]
Great Blog! I especially like that you bring into the light new web sites that have great ideas (or at least a little better) or try to improve things in the real estate universe but dont have the bucks or big marquee names behind them. Little guys can one day be big guys if they do right by the people they say they want to help. and big guys that get too big for their & ouir own good, are soon cut down to size. Viva the free market system & good ‘ol competition!!!
You were right, Dustin. In less than a year there have been so many more players who’ve emerged from “stealth” mode; you may want to add one more to your list - http://www.urbanregistry.com. Manhattan-based, we went “live” last month, rather silently (I doubt if even friends of friends heard of us)! We have both: rentals and ‘for sale’ houses/condos/co-ops/lofts listed on our site. No doubt we have a long way to go. Well, personally, I’m happy to see as many of us in this space. May the best (not necessarily the richest) survive, and perhaps the rest will piggy-back. There’s room enough for all, and for the brokers. Isn’t this an additional medium through which not only the buyer, but even the seller benefits? It should certainly please brokers, I’d say. We drive traffic to their site through the hotlinks we have on ours. The buyer gets a wider choice and with so much convenience. Of course if they see expired listings, it may irk them, but rather that, than race for an advertised rental, especially in NYC, only to be disappointed, and then wait forever until the next one turns up. Eventually, to touch, feel (and smell) the place that one likes, and to walk around a bit before deciding to move in, users need to contact the broker to gain access, right! Ok, about your site, I’d book-marked your blog before I even joined this company! Thanks for sharing your views and some utopian ideas from even others, when they add comments.
Kalpa,
Interesting stuff… Thanks for sharing your site! Feel free to add your site and a description to this wiki page!
In rereading the post I had forgotten that Trulia was once known as “Realwide”… Too funny!
That is funny, indeed! Dustin, thanks so very much. Really appreciate your zippy response and offer. This should please the boss
Cheers.
Kalpa
Congrats on launching your site. I visited UrbanRegistry and it appears from the surface that you will try to make money via ad revenue. Is there more to your business model?
Russ
Hey Russ,
Thanks. For the moment, we would use good ole Google’s AdSense and make money. We hope to have featured/sponsored listings, at some point in the future. Foremost, we’re working towards improving our data quality, so that users benefit from the site and happily pass the word around. Thanks also for taking the effort to visit http://www.urbanregistry.com. Cheers.
[...] I’ve been waiting since August of 2005 April 26, 2007 to announce that Sellsius has launched! [...]
[...] I first met Pete thanks to an introduction from Paul Rademacher before Trulia had launched (and they were going by the name RealWide!). Thanks to my experiment with gHomes, I had started up a conversation with Paul and he knew I was looking to get out of transportation engineering and into the wild world of online real estate. [...]