TechCrunch40 kicked off today in San Francisco. The conference, organized by the popular tech blog Techcrunch, aims to highlight up and coming web applications.

Amongst the search tools, productivity apps, rich media, mobile and community plays (and all kinds of bizarrely named companies), you can find at least one real estate web site – proving that this industry may still some innovation left in it, despite an increasingly brutal market that will surely start to punish some of the other recent startups (see Storms Ahead for Real Estate Sites).

Realius is a new site that dubs itself “fantasy real estate” and promises to provide a suite of real estate related games. They will be demoing their beta at TechCrunch40.

From their press release:

Realius will allow conference attendees to play its flagship game, Price Me Now(TM), which challenges players to guess the price of homes for sale in their market, on the show floor. Price Me Now(TM) evaluates player guesses and awards points based on their performance against the “Realius” price, an aggregate combination of previous player price estimates and the actual list price. Real estate companies and professionals can purchase placement in the game as “coaches” who guide players and make their own professional price guesses.

Realius uses actual MLS listings to power their games, which is an interesting and potentially controversial choice as people will be reviewing and pricing real world homes.

As for how they hope to monetize this idea, Realius has not made their revenue model public – though the press release does allude to the fact that they hope to license their software to real estate brokers.

Scott Kucirek, general manager of Prudential California Realty, one of the nation’s largest real estate companies, says, “Real estate brokerages are struggling to connect with consumers online and Realius has the potential to solve that problem.” Kucirek continues, “Realius games are entertaining, addictive and educational for consumers but also provide companies in our industry with an entirely new way to think about customer engagement.”

I like that they are exploring a business model other than just “Advertising” and partnering with the brokers seems like a smart move. Brokers looking for stickiness and a way to drive traffic to their local search sites might find Realius’ games an excellent way to set their sites apart from the competion; because, let’s face it, the fact that you “now have map-based search!” is not that much of a differentiator anymore.

In principle, I also like the idea of making the real estate process more open and informative and educating consumers through games. Price Me Now could, in theory, help someone get more in tune with the reality of home prices in their market. Some of the larger portals or real estate destination sites might do well to explore this games idea too.

Without seeing the games themselves however, it’s still too early to pronounce judgment on Realius (you can sign up for an invite to the Beta on their site). Anyone heading to TechCrunch40 – stop by and say hello to them and let us know how they’re doing.

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