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Written by: Katie Lance, Senior Marketing Manager, Inman News @katielance

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by limonada

Though the Roost launch (see Roost.com Kicks over the RE Search Cart) is dominating most of the blogosphere today – there are a couple of other stories worth mentioning that I thought I’d throw out there.

Trouble in Bellevue?

John Cook reports that HouseValues cuts staff and its CFO is leaving.

Hope it wasn’t because of that ActiveRain deal… (see ActiveRain Finds Funding)

New Blogs for Redfin

Redfin Corporate Blog announced their Sweet Digs blogs have expanded eastwards and now cover neighborhooods in Boston and Washington D.C.

Ubertor Gets Some Love

Vancouver-based software developers Ubertor were profiled by Techcrunch, for making their elevator pitch via video. Nice work guys.

You know – come to think of it… if more companies did this and just sent a link to their video to me (rather than some boring press release) I may actually pay attention to them.

VendAsta Goes Social

Fellow Canadians VendAsta Technologies Inc. (which includes most of the former execs from Point2) have moved into their new digs and launched their new venture.

I’m not sure what impressed me more; how quickly they got up and running or the fact they were wearing t-shirts outside in Saskatoon in January. (h/t The Phoenix Real Estate Guy)

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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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Jeff, the Xbroker, has slowly been leaking details of his newest venture, RealEspace, over the last few days. What is RealEspace? Well, no-one really knows just yet, but details are emerging. From a recent post at The XBroker, Jeff describes RealEspace as:

* A Best-of-Breed user interface to search property listings, backed by robust demographical analytics and localized content provided by qualified agents on the ground

* A single point of entry, syndicated listing solution for real estate professionals

* A transparent wholesale mortgage search engine—100% anonymous, automated mortgage pre-qualification

* A mortgage broker network offering true flat-fee, full-disclosure loans—you see what they see

* Standardized video tour production & marketing services

Reading through the list, these are lofty goals and while RealEspace hopes to raise millions in their first round of VC funding (see RSS Pieces) – it’s going be a tough play for them to take on some of the more entrenched players like Zillow or Trulia in the search game.

I do wish them well, and I suspect they have some interesting cards up their sleeve, but it seems to me they’d be best focusing on some of the smaller, under served segments with this push, rather then spreading themselves too thin trying to be everything to everyone right out of the gates.

Personally, like sellsius, I’m most interested in what they can do with a mortgage search engine. I think this is a critically overlooked space right now – one that is screaming out for improvement (can anyone say subprime meltdown?) and has been largely ignored by the Real Estate 2.0 revolution. One that could definitely benefit from Jeff’s experience.

Speaking as someone who is gearing up for a home purchase themselves, I find myself increasingly dissatisfied with all the mortgage tools that exist out there already. I’d love to see a place where I could research the loans available to me, find out what I qualify for and then contact a reputable mortgage broker; rather than having my email address and phone number snatched away from me and resold to some money-grubbing loan shark before I get any answers.

If nothing else I’m looking forward to seeing what these guys can pull off. Especially anything that involves a greased pig.

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The pace of blogging at FoREM has slowed a bit over the last few days. I’ve been buried wrapping up a number of projects for my current employer before I make a pretty significant transition.

I’m happy to announce I will be joining the nice folks over at Inman News, as of March 26. I will be joining them to help steer some of their social media projects as well as drive marketing to their popular semiannual Connect Conferences.

Inman News has always been at the forefront of covering and promoting
real estate technology, so I naturally saw them as a perfect fit for me. I will however, continue to blog here at FoREM.

Brad Inman, Jessica Swesey and the rest of the team have been very welcoming and I’d like to publicly thank them for that.

I’m excited for what we’ll be able to accomplish together. Stay tuned.

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Realtor associations are a puzzling bunch.

I put this down largely to a general lack of focus in their overall mission or raison d’etre. Are they supposed to be market cheerleaders, lobby groups, representatives of the industry – what are they? I don’t think they even know sometimes.

Nowhere is this lack of focus more apparent than in their marketing campaigns, which generally range from bad to the downright awful and out of touch (see Buy a House, Or The Dog Gets It for example). They also usually suffer from a startling lack of creativity.

I have only seen a couple of truly creative marketing campaigns in the past – there was one a while back (from somewhere in Florida I think) that was along the lines of “Don’t DIY” or an anti-FSBO message, that struck me as pretty good. But my memory is failing me now and I couldn’t find it in any of my Google searches (Strike One, BTW).

Michael Smith from Nova Scotia Real Estate Agent, tipped me off to an excellent campaign created by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) however.

HowRealtorsHelp.ca is a very clever use of Flash and video technology that helps consumers answer some of the questions they might have when facing one of the biggest financial transactions in their lives.

The message was bang on and it was delivered in a very soothing, yet not condescending manner (Kudos to whomever casted the talent). The site was comprehensive, easy to navigate and very personal – I almost got the sense that the Realtor was in the room with me answering my questions.

In fact it was so successful, I would say my only criticism was that there wasn’t enough video. I was enjoying just sitting back and have her tell me what I need to know. When I had to sit forward and actually read the text on the screen I was a bit taken aback.

Much of what makes this site successful in my mind is the attention to detail. I love that the Realtor welcomes you back if you’ve been to the site before and how she sits and plays with her Blackberry while she waits for you to make a choice.

This is the type of marketing a Realtor association should be doing. Putting a positive face on the industry. Demonstrating a Realtor’s
value proposition by positioning them in a positive light and show
them as caring, knowledgeable market experts.

By taking off their Industry hats for a moment and realizing consumers have a lot of questions they need answering, CREA has created a meaningful, impactful campaign that uses technology to provide the answers in a fun and engaging way.

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