Matt Carter on the Inman News Blog and his take on the future of real estate. Some of the best analysis I’ve read recently.

Granted, I’m biased (full disclosure: I work for Inman News) – but seriously, go read.

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The US based realty search engines (Trulia, and to a lesser degree, Redfin) are quickly getting lapped by their European counterparts.

Seems like coming out of the gates, nearly all of the Brits aped Trulia’s ground breaking search interface – but have quickly pushed that aside as they race to add new features (see Extate Launches Video Tours). Now it’s Trulia’s interface that is starting to look at bit dated.

extate, who are competing against the likes of Nestoria, Zoomf (see Zoomf Aims to Help British Home Buyers) and OnOneMap (see OnOneMap Gives You More), faces the cutthroat reality that in a field crowded with competition, they must innovate or die.

That same lack of competition here may mean the reigning kings of the Real Estate 2.0 search game grow complacent (as was the case with Realtor.com before them) – but also means there’s a huge opportunity for new players to come into the game.

A couple of new features extate has developed recently; that US based real estate search engines should perhaps take note of…

• No more balloon popups. Means the map doesn’t readjust when you select the markers – which I love. Maps jumping all over the place when I’m trying to click on a property. The property information displays the full details in the sidebar which is also nice.
• Markers change color once you’ve viewed them – a simple yet extremely useful innovation which answers one of the most basic questions a real estate shopper might have; “What freakin’ properties have I already seen here?”

More excitingly, The Heat is On. As I’ve said before, “any data set can be made visually sexier with a heatmap” (Heat Maps Catch on Fire) and Trulia does a nice job of layering heat maps onto city level search as a way to see market activity (e.g. Portland Home Prices and Heat Map).

But extate has taken it one step further and added a fourth tab to the Google map that along with Satellite and Hybrid imagery provide heat maps of local prices per square foot (their implementation recalls the visually stunning GeoIQ mashups). This is a great feature that coupled with more specific local information, could be adopted by many of the big brokers too (see Big Brokers Going Local).

All of these advances however, mean very little without a clear monetization strategy – which is one area that Trulia (and again, to a lesser degree, Redfin) have focused much more of their energies to date. That said, it’d be nice to see some of this innovation trickle over to this side of the pond one of these days.

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Great piece in today’s NY Times on the trend of the “property entertainment” on channels such as HGTV and A&E.

TV Land – New York Times

I’ll admit I’ve sat down and watch a few of these shows from time to time, but I don’t find them terribly entertaining. If I’m going to watch “reality” television I want it to involve a desert island or people eating bugs.

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The Seattle based brokerage has always claimed its business model was more in line with consumers’ interests.

Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman has insisted on numerous occasions, that by having non-commission buyers’ agents, it can negotiate more effectively for its clients. From yesterday’s Seattle Times:

“Traditional real-estate brokerage has a screwed-up compensation system. It pays its agents to close [sales] regardless of whether it’s a good price [for the buyer].”

Now he has the data to back that up.

Today Redfin released the details of the Redfin Advantage, a hard analysis of its past year in business. From their press release:

[Redfin's] Seattle-area buyers’ agents negotiate a price that is on average lower than the listing price, while other area brokerages negotiate a price on average above the listing price.

Some more hard numbers from their findings (Read the full report here):

• Redfin King County customers paid on average 99.329% of the listing price while buyers with other brokerages paid 100.233% of listing price for a difference of .904%, for an average savings of $4,474;

• The total Redfin Advantage, combining the negotiating advantage and an average Washington commission refund of 1.952%, was 2.856%. The total savings for an average Washington customer was $14,134;

Certainly on the sell side, a commission based model makes a lot of sense to me. But I too have struggled conceptually with the idea that, as a buyer, my Realtor’s compensation should be based on the final sales price.

Do Redfin’s numbers bear this out? Is Kelman right? Are consumers better served by a non-commission based buyers’ model?

This is a debate that has been played out in many forums already (check out the Bloodhound Blog’s archives for a good look at the issue) – but Kelman’s claims are bound to stir the pot again. He’s gotten very good at antagonizing the industry and despite the occasional “mea culpa” – he clearly seems to relish the role of taking on the old guard.

sellsius real estate blog has called Redfin the ‘Rebel With A Cause‘ who play themselves as the perpetual underdogs. I’m not sure that’s entirely the case – but they do go to great lengths to set up an “us vs. them” mentality. I don’t think Kelman necessarily sees he or his company as the bad boys; more like the Mavericks of the real estate world – wildly unpredictable and disrespectful of authority, but in the end stand a decent chance of splashing some MiGs.

More Coverage:

• Freakonomics’ Stephen D. Levitt’s take on Redfin’s claims
• 360Digest » Has Redfin jumped the shark?

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The New York Times reports on the new real estate buyers – Young Buyers, Prepared and Fearless

Younger buyers have such different approaches to real estate that they are prompting developers to change the way they sell apartments. Some are hyping condominiums with the promise that buyers can eventually rent them out. Others are making sure that their prices are as close as possible to similar projects because they know younger buyers have researched every comparable condominium in the neighborhood before they walk through the door.

I wrote about some of the characteristics of these new buyers several months ago, you can read my post here: Meet the new real estate customer.

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