OpenHouse.com is Too Little Too Late
OpenHouse.com is the latest effort from real estate brand conglomerate Realogy to capitalize on the web and today they have expanded the site’s coverage to all its brands.
They’ve built out the site as a single destination for buyers to build and create a private open house itinerary. The site lists thousands of open houses across the country and pulls the listing inventory from across its brand portfolio (Century 21, Coldwell Banker, ERA and Sotheby’s).
The idea is a good in theory. Functionally however, the site was clunky and overall, I found the site a pretty disappointing experience.
Design wise it is uninspired and bland. Functionally, it was confusing and unintuitive. Luckily (for Realogy anyway), it is still in beta, and a “consumer-facing marketing campaign is not scheduled until later in the year” – meaning they still have a few months to work out the kinks.
They really need to dust this thing off and put a little elbow grease into shining it up a bit before they do. How about maps with a satellite, bird’s eye even street level views? What about giving me an RSS feed of the search so I don’t have to keep coming back? The ability to output my search to a KML file so I can pull it into Google Earth and preview my route would be cool too.
Thankfully, their press release seems to have anticipated my concerns (not sure why you’d release a half finished site though…):
In the months ahead, the OpenHouse.com management team will look to
enhance functionality on the site with a focus on Web 2.0 technologies
that tap into search and social book marking, rich media interfaces,
user-generated content and social networking technologies. The team
will also look to identify and consider appropriate alliances with
content providers with the intent of expanding OpenHouse.com’s depth
and coverage of U.S. real estate markets
The bigger question is are open houses still relevant? Today on real/diaBlog they give us some reasons why real estate video is killed the open house.
It seems to me that driving around neighborhoods visiting open houses is an incredibly inefficient way to find a home you want to buy.
The Internet has given us amazing tools by which we can refine a real estate search down to a manageable level. And Tony and Danilo are right, video — when used appropriately — can be an incredibly useful method by which you can filter out the homes you want to look at, making the step of visiting an open house largely redundant.
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11 Comment(s)
9 Trackback(s)
- From Real Estate 2.0 | Nov 30, 1999
- From OpenHouse.com is Too Little Too Late? - HouseReview | Jun 26, 2007
- From Open House - The Tour Sheet Blog: OpenHouse.com Resources | Jun 26, 2007
- From century 21 real estate | Jun 28, 2007
- From Search Chicago Open Houses Kinda, Sorta at ChitownLiving | A Chicago Real Estate Blog | Jun 28, 2007
- From Foreclosed Homes Articles » OpenHouse.com is Too Little Too Late | Jun 28, 2007
- From OpenHouse.com - what a waste : Real Central VA | Jul 1, 2007
- From What does a franchise bring to the table? : Real Central VA | Jul 6, 2007
- From Search Chicago Open Houses Kinda, Sorta | Nov 15, 2007
John Schroeder | Jun 26, 2007 | Reply
I agree with you on the fact that a site like this really should have RSS and maps as its focus. As long as they make it more intuitive and add some of these improvements it could be a very good site for them. How much time and effort that they spend fleshing it out with some good local content could be a factor in how widely it is accepted though. Searching online for open houses I would still like some local flavor in my search results.
Open houses in moderation still have a place in marketing of houses, condos, new construction, etc. As long as there is a percentage of home buyers who want to visit a handful of open houses on a weekend, open houses will still be a viable marketing technique.
Danilo Bogdanovic | Jun 26, 2007 | Reply
Thank you for adding “when used appropriately”. And much like some photographers and models use photoshop to overly-enhance or hide things in photos, agents, brokers and sellers need to maintain a certain level of accuracy and realism in their videos as to not mislead consumers.
There will be a learning curve and much more discussion on this to come, I’m sure. But that’s just part of the growing pains…
Andrew | Jun 26, 2007 | Reply
THIS IS A BIT MUCH.
“How about maps with a satellite, bird’s eye even street level views? What about giving me an RSS feed of the search so I don’t have to keep coming back? The ability to output my search to a KML file so I can pull it into Google Earth and preview my route would be cool too.”
AVG JOE ISN’T A GEEK. THEY NEED PARTNERSHIPS TO MAKE THIS WORK.
Andy Piper | Jun 27, 2007 | Reply
Open houses are the same thing as window shopping. People like to twiddle around neighborhoods to get a feel of some of the intangible items that don’t show up in the pie charts, graphs and numbers. More is learned by checking out the swing set count, checking out who is walking down the street etc. than you can get from data on a Website.
We still get good traffic through open houses in Ann Arbor Michigan. But very little of it comes from advertising in the Ann Arbor News. We get the best results from open house posts in Craigslist and linking back to the virtual tour on Piperpartners.com. We are not doing video as of yet.
For a lot of people it is about driving the neighborhood.
For people that want to find their home without the help of an agent this is the best way to get into a lot of homes. Also people such as first tiem buyers that are just getting started in the process, are looking to interview agents, and just warm up to the idea of buying a home.
I hope open houses are here to stay!
Matthew | Jun 27, 2007 | Reply
Corcoran.com has been doing this for a while now :
http://www.corcoran.com/property/openhouseplanner/
Chuck Teller | Jun 27, 2007 | Reply
From a design perspective, I would give Openhouse.com a D at best. When viewing it on Firefox, the forms are poorly designed, the Resources page is flush left and they left off the tabs. All the other pages are centered. Far from a professional coming out show. It feels like it is barely an Alpha and certainly not ready for public viewing. Don’t they know the old adage – “you only get one chance to make a first impression.”
havensofmanhattan | Jun 27, 2007 | Reply
I think a few sites have been doing something like this already. It’s a good idea though.
Joel Burslem | Jun 27, 2007 | Reply
@Andrew – Busted. I am a geek.
But, my point there was that the site, like Chuck says, is laughably behind the times design-wise. My suggestions were just a quick braindump of features that they could implement to make it even half-way interesting.
The site is run by Realogy, so I’m not sure what partnerships they’d need.
Charlotte Web Design | Jun 28, 2007 | Reply
“It seems to me that driving around neighborhoods visiting open houses is an incredibly inefficient way to find a home you want to buy.”
Have to disagree with that one. You can’t get a feel for where you want to live by looking at video which can easily be manipulated to cover bad house flaws.
Secondly, how many tech savvy agents are out there creating videos for clients. I’d be willing to say less than 10%. You’d be missing a lot of homes if you stayed in front a pc.
Brian Copeland | Jun 28, 2007 | Reply
When I started opening my homes via video, it was a definite tipping point. You’re right on the $$$ Charlottes Web.
Real Estate Blogger | Jun 30, 2007 | Reply
Looks like a great idea to me. Granted, it will need some tweaking and need to go through refinement. But, a good start nonetheless.