When it comes to real estate ad networks – Zillow has Yahoo! Real Estate & hundreds of newspapers. Trulia has CNNMoney. Realtor.com has MSN. Realtor.com just announced their deal with BlockShopper.com yesterday.
I think, over the next 12-24 months, we will see a race between Zillow, Trulia, and Move (Realtor.com) to sign up the next wave of niche real estate sites and media outlets to their respective ad networks. Building an inside sales team to sell ads is an extremely expensive undertaking, but required to reach agents all over the country. Most niche sites that have traffic likely don’t have enough traffic & ad impressions to warrant hiring their own sales team. And let’s be honest — most of those companies would rather spend their time and effort building more cool features and growing their traffic than managing a sales team. But of course they also need to make money – so having another party handle their ad inventory makes sense.
A new cloud-based rental listings management software for brokers and owners uses the rather tired "You've Got" motif to facilitate rental collaboration.
Today, we’re announcing an exclusive agreement with hyper-local real estate website Blockshopper.com to power its real estate ads and expand the online reach of agents and brokers.
This partnership between Move, Inc. and Blockshopper will make it easier than ever for home buyers and sellers to find Realtor experts in specific neighborhoods, search for houses online on a block-by-block basis, and get accurate, up-to-date information on houses in any Blockshopper neighborhood or subdivision.
Move will start offering two BlockShopper products later this year:
- Local Notes—allows Realtors to make notes on properties, which can be shared through social media.
- Agent News Releases—a tool for Realtors to write about their listings, sales and more to appeal to home buyers and sellers. Blockshopper currently covers 20 local markets, with more to be added soon. The site is part of a growing movement on the web to focus on local coverage.
We’re happy to be joining with them as they grow, and we look forward to the launch of Local Notes and Agents News Releases. Stay tuned for more updates and announcements, and Happy Househunting!
via move.com
Zillow has always been a resource for people in every stage of the home ownership process, whether they’re buyers, sellers, or homeowners.
In late 2009, we added renters to that mix when we launched rental listings on Zillow. And today, we’re delving even further into the world of renters and landlords as we launch Rent Zestimates – estimated rent prices for more than 90 million homes.
Renters make up 70% of all people who move in a given year, but up until now there hasn’t been a way for them to figure out how much they should be paying for rent. I’ve experienced this firsthand, both as a landlord and a tenant. In fact, according to a survey we recently fielded with Ipsos, nearly two-thirds of current renters didn’t do ANY research into fair rent prices before signing their lease.
Enter Rent Zestimates. Computed using a proprietary algorithm that takes public record information, as well as information from hundreds of thousands of rental listings on Zillow, they are starting points in determining a home or apartment’s fair rent price. Combine this with information on comparable homes and apartments for rent on Zillow, and a prospective renter will have many more data points to figure out how much they should pay for a rental. And with Rent Zestimates now on Zillow’s mobile apps as well as on Zillow.com, it’s also easy for renters to arm themselves with data on the go, while they’re out looking at apartments or when walking into a lease negotiation.
It’s not just renters who will benefit, though. Landlords – especially “accidental landlords,” who want or need to move out of their homes, but don’t want to sell in a down market – can use their home’s Rent Zestimate as a starting point to figure out how much they should ask for rent.
via zillow.com
via yourealty.com
YouRealty claims it will change the web like Google, Facebook and Amazon...
Really YouRealty?
When it comes to building real estate websites, listings are kind of important. Just kind of. That is true whether you are an agent/broker trying to be relevant to buyers & sellers in your area or a serial entrepreneur trying to build the next national real estate portal with your own unique twist. I recently got a private question from someone on Quora asking how to get comprehensive MLS listings, so I thought I’d answer it publicly rather than privately.
Adding listings to an agent or broker website in one specific market is a known process – just sign up for IDX, hook it to your website, and away you go.
But for entrepreneurs looking to get nationwide listing inventory — well, it’s not so simple. For those of you in this situation, there are three primary options to consider:
- Direct from the source (agents and brokers) – . This is the route companies like Zillow and Trulia took in order to give them maximum long term flexibility. But it’s extremely time intensive and relationship heavy. You’ve got to win over the likes of ERA, Prudential, Weichert, and about a thousand other medium and large sized brokerages and convince them syndicating their listings to you is a good idea. Or you can spend a boatload of money trying to reach 500,000 agents individually. Whichever route you take, you’ve got to be committed to the effort over the long run and put in the time to form real relationships with key stakeholders at a variety of organizations.
- Aggregate MLS feeds across the county – This route still requires that you aggregate hundreds of MLS feeds (there are roughly 900 MLS’) to get comprehensive. Plus, you’ll have to have a sponsoring real estate agent/broker in each market. Additionally, if you aggregate MLS feeds, you are bound by MLS rules that vary from MLS to MLS (making building your national site a pain in the rear).
- Use ListHub or Point2 – this will probably get you the greatest number of listings in the quickest amount of time. But it’s still not going to result in comprehensive coverage across the United States. Not all brokers/agents use one of those two syndication partners.
So, in short, there is no quick way to achieving comprehensive listing inventory around the country in a timely manner. Unfortunately for serial entrepreneurs, but fortunately for the Zillow’s of the world who have a considerable head start (they’ve been working on it since 2007), if you start now – you don’t really have a chance at having comprehensive listings within the next 2 years. Unless you want to pay a LOT of money to agents and brokers to get them.
Regardless of which route you take, you’ll have to build a XML import system that can handle multiple XML feeds and de-dupe listings that come from more than one source simultaneously. Hope this helps clarify that whole (non-existent) “nationwide listings data” thing.
If anyone else reading has alternatives, by all means, leave them in the comments.