Altos Research has released four new WordPress Plugins that make it dead simple to go deep in to the numbers and create data rich local market blogs.

Altos is among many real estate data providers out there, but is unique in that many of its core products cater to individual Realtors rather than large institutional or corporate clients.

These new plugins allow subscribers to easily embed Altos charts on new posts or pages on their blogs through a very easy interface. The upshot to all this?

It makes it dead simple to create new web properties dedicated to answering real estate consumers’ biggest question right now… “How’s the Market?” – Market blogs are on the rise.

LoCo Market Stats is an Altos-powered blog that is doing just that. Realtor Heather Elias is using the charts to illustrate a week-by-week snapshot on the Loudoun County Virginia real estate market.

Realtor Eric Stegemann at stlhomedata.com is taking a slightly different tack – and using one of the plugin’s most powerful features; which is the ability to create static pages per city or zip-code and then have the data flow in to each page dynamically – like this one he created for Valley Park, Missouri. This means that, unlike the static charts, each time the page is reloaded, the data is refreshed.

Call it the fire-and-forget method to building out market blog.

Real Estate 2.0 is probably best characterized by the explosive growth of social media that allowed Realtors to begin to publish real estate related content to web. I believe the next phase in this phenomenon will be tools that allow individual brokers and agents to begin to expose, publish and interpret the data that drive local markets. This is the premise underlying ventures like the RPR (see NAR Leaps into the Fray — In a Big Way) and what every MLS executive in the country should be thinking about right now.

The winners in this game will be the ones that blow open the doors to the deepest, richest data but, more importantly, make the it easiest, cheapest and most intuitive for the masses to share.

With this release, Altos stands at the head of the pack. At least for now.

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Terabitz, the controversial real estate startup that was accused of data scraping shortly after its launch (see Terabitz addresses data-scraping concerns), has just launched a Make-Your-Own-Mashup side to their site.

Previously, the company let users pull together a number of different data sources in to create a personalized real estate dashboard (see Terabitz Gives You Loads of Data), making it the NetVibes or PageFlakes of real estate.

Now with its new map tab, Terabitz wants you to leverage its data aggregation tools and create your own Google Maps mashup. You can layer as many types of data as you want on top of it; Craiglist listings, MLS listings, FSBOs and Foreclosures, for example. It’s as simple as dragging and dropping icons on to the map.

Here’s a link to a map that I made for Portland Real Estate.

Right now you can share your creation via hyperlink or email, Techcrunch is reporting that later today you will be able to embed the map into your web site. Unfortunately that function was not available when I tested it.

On paper, this new feature is a natural extension of Terabitz’s platform and follows the growing trend for web sites to widgetize their offerings. The question is, who exactly is the audience for this type of tool? Presumably real estate agents looking to add another interactive element to their web sites. But something tells me they’re not looking to layer in FSBOs on top of their listings.

And, if they already have a web site with listings, I suspect they’re pulling a full inventory from an established IDX vendor anyway.

More than lack of audience, the real problem with most real estate widgets these days is that most are crying out for context and color. Listing data alone is dry and boring. Successful widgets should offer real value to the end user, and are more than just branding opportunities for the originating source.

Widgets like those from Altos Research, which can give real time market context in the form of visual graphs.

Or Google’s My Maps, which allows you to exercise your creativity and add the necessary color commentary that your visitors are looking for. Kris and Steve Berg from San Diego Castles have done just this with their Neighborhoods profiles, a brilliant execution that showcases their neighborhood expertise.

Terabitz would do well to articulate the real value proposition behind this widget. It’s a neat demonstration of their technology, but right now, to no real end.

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Homethinking, the Realtor review site, has relaunched today with a totally redesigned site. The biggest change on the site is that it now displays property listings (pulled from HomeGain) on a Yahoo! Maps mashup. But, frankly I find the new layout confusing and a little busy.

Unfortunately, the major problem is I’m not sure where to start first. There seems to be far to much information on their home page and it’s just plain confusing how to get started on your search. Having both the top search bar and now the map search gives the user far too many options right off the bat.

Once you dive in however, a search in your zip code pulls up a series of recently sold properties and highlights the first property’s agent. Clicking on any of the other properties reveals the respective agent’s contact information. Moving on to the agent’s profile page, the map also displays all their currently listed properties. This part of the new site is as slick as it ever was.

A nice touch is the inclusion of Altos Research’s real time pricing trends graphs on each neighborhood page. (BTW – Altos Research maintains an excellent blog as well) Are we seeing a new competitor to Zillow’s API emerging here?

I really like the idea of a map based Realtor search – but I think Homethinking’s new site falls critically short in the usability department in its current form. A few tweaks would be all that it would take to make this a winner.

I would move the map off the homepage and to a secondary position deeper in the site to make it look less like a primary navigation tool. In my opinion, the map interface is most successful when you’re viewing an individual agent’s profile, where you can get a great visual sense of how much activity they’re currently generating. Everywhere else, it’s more of a distraction than anything else.

In a similar vein, Redfin launched a redesign of their site this past week. One of the biggest changes is they’ve simplified their homepage along the Find, Buy, Sell theme- as well as offering some new options to contact their agents with questions.

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