Estately.com is one of my favorite local real estate search web sites (see 10 Kick Ass Real Estate Search Sites). So, when news broke that they had secured $450K in funding I seized the chance to ask founder Galen Ward what was next for the budding property.

What are you going to do with all the money? Ferrari or Porsche?

I’ve found that Consumer Reports doesn’t cover our new car choices, but we’ve only raised an angel round, and that means we have to be frugal. So it’s a Porsche. The company Ferrari will come with the Series A round.

With the remaining money we’re going to build out some new features for our competitors to copy and we’re going to be expanding into new markets. We’ve received quite a few requests for new inspiring ideas from Redfin and Trulia of late, so we’re cooking up some great stuff for them.

Who were the investors?

The investors wish to remain anonymous, but they have all made their money on the web. Mostly through ponzi schemes and fake paypal sites. They 100% support our plans and they are very much bottom-line oriented investors.

What’s next for Estately search technology?

We’re going to monetize social mobile real estate video. I think I’ve said too much.

How has the referral model working? Any shift in strategy?

The referral model is working really well. Consumers have been exceedingly pleased with the service and we’re exceedingly pleased with the good feedback we’ve been getting about our agents. We’re also pleased that we’re generating revenues. I really believe in our model: we work within the industry bringing the best agents from other brokerages to the consumer, which keeps our overhead down, makes it easy to “fire” agents who get bad feedback, and lets us focus on what we do well: search technology. We aren’t reinventing the full-service or discount-service brokerage wheel, we’re finding the best agents, driving more business to them, letting them continue to do what they do well, and letting clients avoid a lengthly interview and search process or the pain associated with working with a mediocre agent.

Any expansion plans? Is Oregon next?

We have nothing but expansion plans. Talk to me in 3 weeks.

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photo credit: Ewan-M

Forget about unique visitors, pageviews, # of listings…

Zillow beat Trulia to win the 2008 Real Estate Webby Award.

Trulia did pickup the People’s Voice award however, so let’s just call it a wash.

Other nominees in the Real Estate category were:

http://www.livinghomes.net/
http://www.livinghomes.net

Centerplan.dk
http://www.unit9.com/awards/cente…

Rentomatic
http://www.rentomatic.com

Congrats to all.

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I like this ad.

It speaks to me. It humanizes the company (love that it ends with his email address). Plus it answers a real problem with a clear solution.

So where is real estate’s Dan Hesse?

Putting a human face on your brand can connect you with a whole new generation of consumers.

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Web sites that allow SMB’s (including Brokers and Agents) to create online video advertisements seem to be springing up all over the place.

You’ve got sites like Mixpo who let you create an video ad from start to finish (see ActiveRain Launches (Silently) New Video Platform), players like WellcomeMat that let you host your completed videos (see WellcomeMat Goes Social), players like Turnhere which will create a video for you, players like Spotrunner which let you customize canned footage (see Success with Spot Runner?) and players like Sprout (see
Sprout Lets You Build Single Property Widgets) and RealEstateShows and Slide (see Splash Some Flash On Your Site) that let you create an interactive Flash based slideshow.

If there’s any doubt that video based advertising will soon come to dominate the ‘Net. Fuggadaboutit, it’s already here.

The latest company to hit the street is SpotMixer- who, like Mixpo, allow you to create a whole video advertisement online, without any need for expensive video editing software. SpotMixer is from the folks at One True Media, a company I first wrote about a couple years ago (see Creating a Killer Listing Presentation, Part II).

Seems like they had so much interest from businesses in their platform that they spun out SpotMixer as a separate entity for SMBs to create their video ads.

The platform really is very slick. You can mix still photography, video, titles music and audio voice overs to create a video ad (you can see some examples here) very quickly.

One thing I really liked about SpotMixer was their use of templates. Realizing that most users wouldn’t have time to create a presentation from scratch, SpotMixer has provided dozens of ready made templates you can just drop your media into. The best part is that they samples are based on mood rather than industry - so rather than having thousands of “real estate” ads that all look the same, you can choose a template based on the brand image you wish to portray (trusted, elegant, vibrant, fun, etc.).

Once you’ve created your video ad you can embed it in your web site, blog or social network profile; you can also download it as a high-rez movie and even order DVD copies of your masterpiece. SpotMixer also promises in the very near future you’ll be able to send that video add to local television partners as well.

One month’s access to the platform (to create unlimited ads) is just $79.

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by tropicdiver

Redfin’s new release is breaking new barriers, literally - they are adding bank-owned foreclosures and for-sale-by-owner inventory along side alongside their MLS listings (more from 4realz.net). The first, as far as I know, of any major brokerage to do so.

Definitely a smart move for the company which has long been out front pushing for greater innovation in real estate search experience online.

Redfin says it’s going to support the addition of these listings through a flat fee. Which means, I presume, as a buyer, if you want to put an offer on a FSBO through Redfin, they’ll help you write it up and just charge you X.

To me it signals one thing… with this news, with Roost’s recent launch, several MLS talking about or already syndicating their listings to the major search portals and others busy developing public facing web sites - it looks like we’re in the early stages of a sea change for these organizations. Who knows where that will end up.

One thing is for sure, some people don’t like change. And with this move, Redfin will either raise the ire of the MLSes or spur other brokers down a similar path. In either case, Redfin wins, securing itself in the center of another PR firestorm or being the catalyst for genuine change in the industry.

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by minifig

An interesting item in last week’s Wall St. Journal about the online war of words between beer giants Miller and Anheuser-Busch.

Miller has taken the interesting tact of hiring a former Ad-Age reporter and created “Brew” Blog, a daily blog to covers the beer industry from Miller’s vantage point.

Why do this? The answer from WSJ.com.

While the site lets Miller tweak its famously tight-lipped rival, it also gives the company a platform to take a first crack at spinning industry news.

Even with its obvious bias, the blog is actually a fantastic resource for anyone interested in staying on top of the beer wars. Several years ago I worked for Molson, before it became Molson Coors, so the brewing industry is still of interest to me (both professionally and socially).

But I think there is a lesson here for the real estate industry. Often when I speak to brokers, I hear a lot of them complaining about the negative press the real estate industry gets in the mainstream media.

One thing I suggest is for them to create their own blogs to counter this noise. Not fill the space with meaningless marketing platitudes like “Now is Great Time to Buy…” but actually contribute meaningfully to the conversation and to debate the issues.

The big real estate brands would be wise to take a lesson from Miller; create a real estate blog and hire a full time blogger. It could be an agent - but they’re (hopefully) too busy selling real estate. Rather, carve out some dollars from that bloated print marketing budget and hire a social media guru or a cub reporter fresh out of journalism school, then let them off the leash a bit to create stories that are relevant to the conversation but maintain your brand integrity.

A company like Redfin understands this idea implicitly. It’s the impetus behind their Sweet Digs bloggers (see Redfin Unleashes the Listing Critics) - who, granted, can veer out of control every once in a while (see Something I’ve Been Meaning to Say for A Long Time) but still contribute greatly to the real estate conversations in their respective markets.

I’m actually surprised more of the bigger real estate brands haven’t picked up on this idea, and I’d love to see one of them try. Go ahead, your brand will thank you.

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photo credit: Matthew Sylvester

This from Techcrunch today, in The British Are Coming Back Soon.

DotHomes, the UK-based real estate search engine which now covers the US, UK and South Africa, says it has doubled its number of nationwide real estate listings in the US, bringing its database up to two million residential properties for sale and rent. By contrast, Yahoo Real Estate, Roost, Trulia and Zillow (and others) get feeds from brokers and MLS services in the US. From a natural language search, DotHomes generates direct links to the original source of information - the listing agent/broker - by sending out Google-like spiders to crawl sites. But DotHomes reckons it is now neck and neck with Trulia. That’s good but it needs more marketing partners if it’s to become better known in the US. DotHomes is funded by three of Europe’s leading early-stage venture capital firms: The Accelerator Group; Arts Alliance; and Samos Investments.

The key line in there: “DotHomes reckons it is now neck and neck with Trulia.”

It’s an interesting statement, and one that sets up the natural response… By what reckoning?

Sheer numbers of listings should not the measure of a site’s success. Rather, it’s the quality of listings that is the better measure.

No sense touting the number of listings one has, if the majority (or even the minority) are expired, withdrawn or inaccurate.

Crawling listings seems to be a very clumsy way of getting an accurate representation of the true market of properties for sale, since many sites that are crawled are notoriously slow in updating their inventory. Broker feeds are perhaps a better way of capturing the market - but both Zillow, Trulia and Frontdoor suffer from some of the same inconsistencies when I’ve conducted a real estate search. I’ve stumbled on many homes that once I click through have somehow have become inactive.

Roost’s model of partnering with the local MLSes seems on the surface to be the best solution - being that the MLSes should have the most up-to-date data. But Roost too suffers by only having a patchwork of national coverage.

That leaves Realtor.com - the granddaddy of real estate search sites. And still the reigning champ on listings through their partnership with NAR. Too bad that their search experience is so muddied, that I still can’t figure out how to use it (though their Alpha site seems to hold some promise).

That said, kudos to DotHomes for their rapid growth since they launched in the US (see International Real Estate Search Site Makes a Move into US). Plus, I’m really digging the new look.

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photo credit: Paul Garland

3daybid.com is a site that advertises auctions of foreclosed homes.

It’s also a company that’s really starting to annoy me p*ss me off.

They’ve flooded the Inman News group on Facebook using what are obviously forged user accounts and some sort of script to spam dozens of these auction properties onto the wall.

I’ve reported the company to Facebook a number of times, as this is surely a violation of the social networks terms of service. But I’m about to throw my hands up in the air in defeat - this is a battle that I’m clearly losing. I can’t spend all day deleting these spam posts.

3daybid - I’m not sure what you thought you’d accomplish by doing this but if you’re listening, please stop.

This is not the right way to engage with an online community. If you thought it was a clever way to market properties, you’re wrong. It’s a perfect example of how you are tarnishing your brand, if you care - which I suspect you do not.

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by powerbooktrance

Geeks love their iPhones. And I tell you what… as soon as I finish writing about a new iPhone application in real estate (see Terabitz Creates MLS iPhone Site), another one lands on my doorstep.

Not that that’s a bad thing.

This time, it’s from Cellsigns - the SMS marketing company. They’ve launched a new product where you can text in to a number (say, on a for sale sign) and receive the video tour of that property on your iphone.

If you have an iPhone, you can see how it works by texting the numbers on the following video

Text VID555 to 79274 and you’ll receive a SMS message with the property information and a link that opens the video up in the iPhone’s built in Youtube player. Pretty slick.

Unfortunately, like other Youtube videos, the experience is crippled by the iPhone’s EDGE connection and unless you’re in a WiFi hotspot the playback is hardly bearable.

Nevertheless, a very cool innovation and one that will surely get better with the arrival of the much demanded 3G iPhone.

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ActiveRain has always had its eye on video. It has dabbled a little bit with its RainTV segments, shot at last summer’s Real Estate Connect conference, and more recently by holding a video contest.

Now, it seems, they are making a bigger play for a piece of the real estate video pie. Through a partnership with Mixpo.com they have just announced a new platform that will more deeply integrate video into ‘Rainers blogs. The plan, which was supposed to be on the d-l, was leaked by some over-enthusiastic Beta participants, prompting this blog post.

You will be able to host and edit your videos directly from video.activerain.com, and then take the videos in your library and embed them directly to your blog posts with the click of one button. You will also be able to embed them wherever on the internet you would like outside of ActiveRain. One of the cool features that fits nicely with everyone’s blogging efforts is the ability to add links directly into your videos. So if you are giving a tour of a listing, to potential buyers, you can include links to the listing on your site, or to surrounding attractions you have written about in your blog.

ActiveRain seems to be making small strides recently to move beyond their early social networking roots towards becoming more of a repository of all of a real estate professionals digital content. Not as a sexy of a business plan, but probably a more sustainable business model.

The platform will cost Realtors $29/month.

This move is also surely a shot across the bow aimed at online provider WellcomeMat, which has been a popular choice for video hosting by Realtors to date. WellcomeMat, which, conversely, just added social networking to it’s video platform (see WellcomeMat Goes Social), has yet to announce publicly its pricing plan.

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