Where Do You Get Your Real Estate News?
Social news sources like digg.com are great places to get the latest tidbits on technology news and feed a raging information addiction, but unfortunately, despite recently rolling out new topics in June that included one for business and finance, it still doesn’t cover real estate news in any great depth.
Inman News does a remarkably good job of covering the latest industry events and announcements, but I’m a big fan of the social news model where stories and links are introduced and promoted based on readers’ preferences rather than editorial dictation.
Despite the recent proliferation of great real estate blogs, widespread mainstream media attention and new innovation in the industry, there’s a glaring absence of a central information source for Real Estate related news right now.
Recently revamped Netscape.com has a real estate channel - which could be a winner, but is suffering from a general lack of community at the moment. It remains to be seen whether there will be a widespread acceptance of their site. I personally find the site a little confusing to navigate and it seems to require a couple of extra mouse clicks to get anywhere I want to go.
Fanpop is an interesting site that’s currently in Beta (isn’t everyone these days?). Users can create ‘Spots’ on any topic and people can submit interesting sites, and the result is combined with news feeds from other sources and a forum to discuss the subject matter. It’s a neat premise, but weakly executed in my opinion.
Rather than hoping that someone outside the industry to adjust to our needs, I think we should look from someone inside who can create a social news site for Realtors and real estate buffs. Heck, it worked for social networking. Anyone out there prepared to step up to the plate?
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12 Comment(s)
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- From Search Engine Marketing | Dec 31, 1969
- From Agent CEO: Where do you get your real estate news? | Aug 25, 2006
- From BloodhoundBlog - The weblog of BloodhoundRealty.com, an exceptional-service residential real estate brokerage in Metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona. | Aug 26, 2006
- From Real Estate News Management: Housing News *very beta* released -- Pittsburgh Homes Daily | Sep 3, 2006
- From Where Do You Get Your Real Estate News? (reddit.com) | Sep 10, 2006
- From Homethinking - Real Estate Agent Search - | Sep 27, 2006
- From Real Central VA - Tracking the Charlottesville and Central VA real estate market and more » Real estate news - 2.0 style | Sep 28, 2006
- From Estate Launched Estate Beta | Jan 25, 2007
- From The Carnival of Real Estate Edition 8 | Overseas Property Investment Blog | May 1, 2007
- From rgvdagreat | rgvdagreat | Aug 23, 2007
Claudia | Aug 25, 2006 | Reply
Great advice, Joel. Let’s get this kind of networked news service started, it’ll benefit us all!
http://agentceo.blogspot.com/2006/08/where-do-you-get-your-real-estate-news.html
Greg Swann | Aug 25, 2006 | Reply
Paging 4Realz… One Phantom Philter beats the whole social web, for all of me.
Teresa Boardman | Aug 26, 2006 | Reply
The best real estate news is local. Home values on your block are affected more by a plant closing a half mile away or a new shopping center a mile away than they are by a trend 5 states away. National real estate web sites and blogs are really useless when it comes to understanding your own local economy and real estate market.
Todd Waller | Aug 26, 2006 | Reply
Teresa,
You are right on in your analysis of real estate news and trends, as it applies to our clients. However, an aggregator or social network of agents across the country that do keep local real estate blogs would be beneficial to someone like myself.
Joel’s recommendation is not necessarily intended for consumers, rather agents and real estate industry professionals.
Right off the bat I can think of utilizing that networking to find an agent to refer out-bound clients. I can also see the usefulness in snapping up marketing ideas that may not have migrated back into my region.
Personally, I set a few searches in Google to an RSS feed into my Thunderbird email client. I get regional, national and industry news items. For local stats, well, I create them myself off the MLS.
John Ballentine | Aug 30, 2006 | Reply
I agree that real estate really is about local information. I have been working on a website that would be a news agregator and also contain original articles. IF anyone has an ideas, please email me.
Jim Duncan | Aug 30, 2006 | Reply
Here’s an idea - upload our real estate feeds and aggregate them in one place. NetNewsWire allows me to export just my real estate group (there’s a lot of them!) Paging someone more technically competent than I …
Joel Burslem | Aug 30, 2006 | Reply
I’m actually looking into just such a solution Jim. Will let you know what I get together, hopefully in the next few weeks.
Greg | Aug 31, 2006 | Reply
Check out Blanche Evans of http://www.realtytimes.com
I think she is one of the industry’s best writers.
Saeed Goraya | Sep 1, 2006 | Reply
I am currently working on a aggregator - We are looking to find agents/brokers/appraisers in each locale and develop an organic social network - We have the central valley of CA pretty much nailed
The next iteration of the project will include a blog & RSS feed aggregtor
If anyone is interested in any details, please let me know at sgoraya at gmail dot com
{My background is Comp Sci & Commercial Appraisal}
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Saeed
Chicago-based Real Estate News Aggregator | Nov 20, 2006 | Reply
I probably started my Real Estate news website the same time as the Housing News poster did. We are both using the same open source framework, we just have differing images and domain names. We both did the same thing without realizing our overlap; we should work together on this.
feridun | Mar 15, 2007 | Reply
every agents add all propertys to our link for free!
lenny mauricio | May 15, 2007 | Reply
hi im a student at fsu as an entrepreneur, where do you see technology and real estate in 3 5 10 yrs from now….where does the internet fall in the way of paying online