Estately has been playing the slow and steady game, but it’s one that I’m increasingly convinced is working out for them.

Today, they announced the addition of their tenth metropolitan market as they bring Atlanta under their fold. Adding 127,000 listings from two Georgia MLS databases, it now brings the total number of properties for sale on Estately.com to over 459,000. In addition to Georgia, Estately covers California, Illinois, New York, Oregon and Washington.

Estately’s search tool is a very robust and impressive product, as I’ve noted a number of times in the past. It’s one of my favorite search destinations on the web. I especially like their transit search tool which calculates a property’s distance from a particular transit line (see Estately Comes to Portland). In Atlanta, you can now do these kind of searches in proximity to the MARTA line.

Estately works on a referral basis – matching pre-screened Realtors with leads coming off its site. When a client who comes from Estately completes a successful transaction, the agent is charged a 20% referral fee. If you’re in any of their markets and want to work with them you can find out more at Estately for Agents.

At this point Estately’s closest parallel is probably Roost (see Roost Redesign Radically Changes Experience) and it’s interesting comparing the two MLS driven sites’ traffic patterns. Seems like there is quite a horse race developing there!

Share on Facebook

One of my favorite online real estate search tools, Estately expanded in to two new markets today; Greater Chicago and Long Island, New York. This marks the first markets outside of the West Coast for the Seattle based search site — Estately previously only served Washington, Oregon and California.

This means Estately, which pulls all of its listings from its relationships with the local MLSes, now has over 330,000 homes for sale on its site.

Another welcome feature in this latest release is the addition of past home sales information to every listing. You’ll now be able to see the entire sales history on any listed home to see if has recently changed hands and if so, for how much. This new feature is powered through a relationship with Cyberhomes.

With these two new markets, Estately is taking big strides to move beyond being simply a regional player. Even if it still has a long way to go to rival the reach of the big national sites, there’s no question the underdog is starting to lose its puppy teeth.

estately, real estate search, real estate 2.0

Share on Facebook

photo credit: LWY

Estately.com has long been one of my favorite real estate search experiences on the web (see 10 Kick Ass Real Estate Search Sites). And today it just got much better (well, for me at least, anyway).

This morning they announced that they have expanded in to Oregon by adding over 35,000+ Portland single family homes and condos into their search results. Listings are being pulled from the RMLS™ Regional Multiple Listing Service.

A couple of things really set Estately apart from the competition and certainly any of the local broker sites. First, the neighborhood search tool is fantastic. Say you want to do a search for a home in one of Portland’s hot neighborhoods; Mississippi, Sellwood or the Pearl, for example. Estately plots the neighborhood boundaries on to its map and confines the search to those boundaries – making it really easy to streamline your search.

(One weird bug I found was that when I did a search in my neighborhood it kept telling me I lived in North Bend – Estately founder Galen Ward confirmed this was a known issue and that they were working hard to fix it).

The second new feature in Estately, and one I think Rose City residents are going to love, is a revamped ability to confine your search results their proximity to mass transit routes like the MAX Light Rail Service.

An example search:

• Homes under $400,000 within walking distance of light rail in Portland

I suspect this type of information, along with services like WalkScore (see Measuring Walkability with Walk Score), are increasingly going to be factors that people build in to their home searches (especially as more and more stare down $4+ gas)

Brokers, I’d follow Estately’s lead and start building this type of functionality into your web sites. It’s could be a great point of differentiation in your marketing vis a vis your local competition.

Portland-based Realtors, Estately offers you a way to connect with and offer your services to local home buyers and sellers through its Agent Match program. Estately screens and vets all Realtors in the program to ensure an excellent level of service but if you’re looking to Connect with tech-savvy and tech-sophicasted buyers – this may be an excellent way to do so.

The downside to the new site is that — apparently due to the RMLS rules — Estately is not able to display the addresses of the properties displayed on the map. Apparently, according to Ward, they are able to share those via email – so the site will heavily encourage you to send those listings you’re interested in either to yourself or a partner in order to see the street address. A kludgey workaround but forced on them by the arcane rules of the local MLS.

Share on Facebook

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.

Share on Facebook

Share on Facebook

Shackprices, the Seattle based real estate search site, has relaunched itself under a new banner, now calling itself Estately (a much more dignified name, if you ask me). John Cook reports that the name change was prompted by a desire “to move away from the word ’shack’.”

The company, which is a licensed broker with the NWMLS, has been in business for just under a year and is led by Galen Ward, a blogger at Rain City Guide.

Shackprices had always had one of the more innovative map-based search tools (see ShackPrices Makes For Fast Home Searching) and Estately continues that tradition. It seems that the smaller brokers often are able to pioneer these kinds of technological advances. Blueroof.com and Movoto also come to mind.

Estately has no plans to get involved in the buying and selling of real estate (at least not yet) and is using its MLS affiliation to gain access to the IDX feeds to populate its listing database.

Launched in tandem with the rebranding, Estately has also launched an Agent Match function which hopes to pair real estate buyers with agents. A pay-for-leads based model is not surprising, though ambitious. HouseValues and HomeGain are already heavily committed in this space.

Estately promises to do it a little differently however. Agents are all prescreened by Estately and buyers can view ratings on every agent (see The Search for Perfect Agent). Buyers can identify their needs and agents can bid for their business (much like BuyerHunt). Ultimately, unlike HouseValues and HomeGain, the final decision remains with the buyer to choose the agent they want to work with. Estately gets paid a percentage of the commission for the referral.

It remains to be seen whether Estately can truly make a go with this model. Many companies have tried and failed before them. Barring that, its options are pursuing an advertising model or alternatively, it could license its technology to other brokers nationwide looking to give their web sites a facelift.

I suspect the later will ultimately be the best course for them, but in the interim, I’m rooting for them to pull it off.

Share on Facebook