my 2cents.

here is a link
agentmachine.com, a great tool to find top real estate agents and realtors

If you choose to focus more on the interest of the broker/agent, you end up with a lack luster consumer experience. It could be argued that this is what you get on HomeGain. Going in this direction allows you to generate revenues and hopefully profits. However, your ability to sustain this model is strictly dependent on the company’s ability to control and maintain it’s distribution…or in the online world, consumer traffic channels. HomeGain has done a good job keeping a grip on their distribution points and has solidified that grip by joining a large Newspaper conglomerate. That’s still a long term risky bet though with consumers moving away from traditional information outlets in print and online (AOL, Yahoo, etc.). The minute they lose access to those distribution points or those distribution points themselves erode, they will have trouble.

If you choose to focus too much on the consumer, you’ll struggle to continually grow revenues. Now let me clarify that because I know you’re thinking of all those business that have proven that statement wrong…Google being the main one. The online real estate space is a niche within the internet. One site can only generate so much traffic and by having a consumer centric site, you’re limited on the products you can sell to advertisers. The internet is a market place just like a flea market or a shopping mall. The marketplace makes money by charging the vendors/sellers to display their goods assuming the marketplace is in a good position to attract buyers. Not rocket science.

Now for the irony of the “consumer centric” sites.

Zillow lauched their site with property records data that they paid a pretty penny for in order to generate “consumer” traffic…don’t get that confused with “buyer” traffic. This created their marketplace of sorts. Unfortunately, the “consumers” coming to their marketplace were (and still are) largely homeowners curious as to what Zillow thought their house was worth and to see the neat birds eye view of their home. They were not attracting “buyers”. So you take a look at your house but really have no reason to come back or engage with a seller/vendor. Upon realizing this (and as their traffic dropped month after month), the Zillow guys (new to this space) realized they better get some real listings in order to attract buyers in order to be able to charge brokers/agents. So they began allowing “free listings”. Anyone ever question why they are “Free”? I mean after all, there has to be some value to posting your listings on a site that attracts consumers right? Well, they now NEED the broker’s listings to evolve their marketplace and to exist long term. The Irony is that as much as they want to be consumer centric, the brokers and agents now control Zillow’s ability to exist. That’s right…if brokers all decided to boycott them, they’d just be another for sale by owner site with limited data. Their bird’s eye view already lost its luster long term because most sites now have that mapping technology. Cyberhomes.com has trumped them on the AVM side so they are in an interesting predicament right now.

Trulia is another “consumer centric” site where the brokers and agents now control their ability to exist. Whether brokers know that or not is a whole other question. Instead of going out and buying other data like Zillow did to establish a consumer marketplace, they created a program to crawl the web and rip-off listing data from other sites. Yes we were one of them. Not quite an above board business practice but they now had the attention of the industry. Big gamble, but because of the industry they did it in, it worked. After that, they apologized and played dumb even though they knew exactly what they were doing. They then said, well we’re here now so if you aren’t going to allow us to steal your data why don’t you just give it to us….after all, it’s Free and every little bit of exposure helps right? Brokers all over bought it hook line and sinker. Now they are turning around and playing the brokers off each other buy charging them for enhaced listing services. Gotta hand it to them.

So again, the sites that will prevail are the ones that create a balanced marketplace. Just think of that nice new shopping mall versus the old run down one. They must have consumer centric products but they must also embrace the vendor/seller/broker. HomeGain is agent/broker centric but will continue to make money and be profitable as long as they control their distribution points. Zillow is a big question mark right now. If brokers and agents embrace them like they’ve embraced Trulia, they’ll be fine. Trulia has achieved a decent balance and is now getting brokers to pay but if their luster wears off and they experience a broker rebellion like Realtor.com did, they’re done.