Give me a call at your convenience. 312-601-5822

Thanks

Thanks for the HomeGain mention. Our “little orange ape” is actually a gorilla and his name is Max.

You can follow Max the HomeGain Gorilla here:http://blog.homegain.com/category/max/

Louis Cammarosano
General Manager, HomeGain

Great information as always. The site is very much non offensive and I get it with the national brand and the appeal that they are making that Tim mentions in comparison to the other ventures that their sister company owns.

Their site to me doesn’t do anything that is differen than others or out there in a sense.

I mean what is the compelling reason for the consumer or the agents for that matter.

On the “agents\brokers” page they have some text that frankfully is hard to read but not bad content wise.

With everyone competing for ad dollars and eyeballs you like to see someone step out and really push it to the max, kind of a go big or go home type thing.

We shall see. Would love to interview Tim though and have him speak a little bit more about the site and things.

I think you’re dead on in your assessment that the media elite would benefit by taking a page from the likes of Estately and Roost. I think a lot of what you end up seeing on the big sites is that since their business models rely heavily on advertising dollars, you get a distracted visual hierarchy that takes emphasis away from what brought them there in the first place. As always, thanks for the info and keep up the good work.

Raj C.
Social Media Guru
http://www.neighborcity.com
http://www.realestatespace.com

Thanks for the mention of our name change and for your observations.

You’re right, reasons for the name change do include an aggressive effort to capture more national traffic to drive to our existing 15,000 advertisers. As we’ve seen in the other Classified Ventures businesses (cars.com, Apartments.com and HomeGain), we think a strong national online brand supported by local sales and promotion (provided by our papers in their markets) is a strong recipe for success for both consumers and advertisers alike. I just wish we had done this change a while ago….

So you think the site is bland but competent, eh? I guess I’ve heard worse, but thanks for highlighting where we can improve Look for more product development from us in 2009!

All the best,

Tim Fagan
President, CV Real Estate
http://www.HomeFinder.com
http://www.HomeGain.com

I am curious, what other innovators do you see out there that are on the leading edge of Search, besides Estately? And, what about their search makes it more valuable to people looking for homes?