New York City Real Estate Blog

Blogs in Vogue

"Perhaps another sign of the blogosphere’s evolution is the growing number of blogs being put up for sale. The Blog Herald, for example, changed hands twice last year; Aaron Brazell just put his personal blog, Technosailor, on the block, while b5media is approached on a fairly regular basis by people looking to sell their blogs. According to a story by Frank Barnako, about 400 blogs a month are being sold via auction through SitePoint. BlogCatalog, for example, recently sold for $40,0000 (here’s the SitePoint listing).

Of course, the value of blogs has much to do with their focus and industry. A site focused on a hot area such as video may be worth more than someone who writes a personal blog about a particular topic. In any event, the blog market will probably heat up this year as the blogosphere becomes more mainstream and “enterprising” entrepreneurs try to capitalize on the “value” - perceived or not - of their blogs.

Update: Technosailor received a bid of $23,500 but it was later withdrawn when Aaron Brazell, Technosailor’s owner, couldn’t get a few final details worked out. So, it’s back on the block with a start price of $7,500."
Blogs for Sale, Blogs for Sale(MarkEvans)

The best first impression on the Internet & expertly staged photos are crucial

“IN real estate, a picture can be worth more than a thousand words. Much, much more. When selling properties online, agents and Web designers say that the pictures buyers see of houses and apartments for sale are often the first — and sometimes the only — chance for a seller to make a good impression. Less-than-flattering pictures can turn buyers off and lead to lonely open houses.

Eighty percent of people across the country who bought a new home last year used the Internet while house hunting, and they rated photographs as the most useful tool in their search, according to a survey of buyers and sellers by the National Association of Realtors. The survey also found that 24 percent of home buyers got their first glimpses of their new homes on the Web, up from a mere 2 percent in 1997.”

Making Every Pixel Count(NYT)

"The Real Estate marketplace becomes much more transparent for consumers"

“Home buyers and sellers have already seized much of the power once in the hands of exclusively of real estate professionals. But they're about to get stronger still. The changes to the real estate industry have come fast, with listings and valuations tools widely available for free on the Internet.

Now, according to many of the participants of Real Estate Connect NYC 2007, a conference devoted to outlining the changes facing the industry, the industry is on the cusp of another technical revolution, one that revolves around that Time Magazine person of the year - YOU!

Real estate blogs, which have been around for a few years, exploded in popularity during 2006. These sites provide a wealth of unvarnished opinion, truths and half-truths about towns and neighborhoods all over the country - the inside dirt on restaurants, schools and crime.

"The rules have fundamentally changed," said Brad Inman, the host of Real Estate Connect and publisher of Inman News. "Social networking is lifting real estate and in the next 12 months it's going to overwhelm real estate. It's been happening since Craig's List started but it's only now coming to a head."

Tech trends rock real estate world(CNNMoney)

Are you looking to track your traffic on your real estate blog....

Analytics: You Can't Afford NOT to Track

ClickTracks

ClickTracks' free version was recently released, but has definitely created some buzz in the industry. The analytics software is targeted towards helping users understand their visitors in order to increase ROI.

This Version, known as ClickTracks Appetizer, comes with a standard interface, but also includes behavioral segmentation, campaign tracking (including PPC), and conversion tracking in order to help users make the best decisions for their search marketing campaigns. A cool perk they've started is the announcement of "Web Analytics Day" where they turn on advanced features such as funnel reporting and advanced visitor segmentation. I think this is a great way to entice users to upgrade to advanced versions of ClickTracks, and its showing in their increasing market share.

So there you have it, three good options to help you make educated decisions for your website. So don't let your website sit untracked as time passes by, do yourself and your business a favor and sign-up for an Analytics package right away, even if you're blindly holding out for a more "robust" package and freer budgets in the future.

Analyzing something as simple as "Top Exit Pages" can help you pinpoint why users are dropping off your website. By tweaking these pages and keeping visitors on your site, you can help increase things like revenue and conversion rate (I think this is the primary goal for every businessperson). Keeping track of the right metrics through Analytics software will make all the difference in your future online success, because, as any marketer will tell you, understanding your customer is tantamount to making any money in business.

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Real Estate Search Engine

A Real Estate Vertical Search Roundup, Part 1
By Greg Sterling,
June 7, 2006

If you thought the housing market was competitive, try online real estate sites. After a couple of years of seeming stability and calm, the sector is now booming with new startups offering everything from estimates on the value of your house (and your neighbors) to discounts on broker commissions and ratings and reviews of local sellers' agents.

According to comScore, traffic to U.S. real estate sites grew 23% from April 2005 to April 2006, representing an increase from roughly 34 million to 42 million unique monthly users. The most visited sites, according to comScore, were the Move.com network (formerly Homestore) followed by MSN Real Estate (the biggest gainer), HomeGain, AOL Real Estate, RealtyTrac.com, Rent.com, ServiceMagic, Apartments.com and newcomer Zillow.com.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) says that approximately $12 billion dollars in the U.S. is spent annually on real estate marketing and advertising, much of which is still allocated to traditional media. The Newspaper Association of America reported that print real estate classified advertising grew 26.3% from the first quarter of last year to $1.1 billion in Q1 this year. Indeed, roughly one quarter of the projected $18 billion in print newspaper classifieds this year will be contributed by real estate listings.

In contrast to print and other traditional media, spending on real estate marketing online is estimated at somewhere between $1.2 billion and $2 billion for 2006. Yet the NAR reports that the percentage of potential U.S. home buyers using the internet as part of their housing search process went from 2% in 1995 to 77% in 2005.

That discrepancy, between consumer usage of the Internet and the internet's share of real estate ad dollars, makes the sector ripe for expansion—and future consolidation. Here's a partial overview of some of the new or noteworthy sites and tools that have launched or re-launched recently. It's not a complete list—given the importance of vertical real estate sites, SearchDay will be looking more closely at the sector going forward.

Google Base

Google's all-purpose content upload site offers real estate listings from a growing range of sources, including the New York Times, former Knight-Ridder newspapers and several vertical real estate sites. In a mysterious and somewhat serendipitous process, Google's "one box" real estate pull-downs occasionally appear on search resultswhen users input certain combinations of keywords. These listings are also available to consumers directly via Google Base. (As a side note, the pull-down menus in Base offer a window into Google's approach to vertical search more generally.)

Google Earth also features real estate listings, based on its API and the development efforts of various real estate firms. Here is Forsalebyownercenter.com and Prudential Real Estate, Chicago. While the richness and possibilities for realtors are greater in Earth, the exposure is more limited. To date there is only token usage of Google Earth for real estate search by consumers.

HomePages

Owned and operated by real estate lead-generation provider HouseValues, HomePages was one of the first professional sites (after HousingMaps) to use maps as the primary display and navigational vehicle for real estate listings. The site offers complete MLS data also provides extensive neighborhood and schools information. It also offers a range of subscription-based ad opportunities for local agents.

Homethinking

Started by former Jupiter analyst Niki Scevak, Homethinking rates the performance of sellers' agents in an effort to help people evaluate and find agents to represent their homes. Homethinking takes public data and consumer reviews and effectively gives homeowners a scorecard on how well or poorly local realtors in their markets perform. Here's an example. The site is almost unique in providing this qualitative and quantitative information on real estate sales professionals. Advertising on the site is primarily pay per phone call, which currently commands $40 per call according to Scevak.

HousingMaps

One of the original "mashups" that began the mapping API frenzy almost two years ago, HousingMaps combines Google Maps and Craigslist real estate data. Site creator Paul Rademacher left his job at Dreamworks Animation to work for Google full time on the heels of his unpredicted success with the site. And the site ignited a craze to plot real estate listings data on a mapping interface, a model that has been adopted by most of the newer real estate verticals to launch in its wake.

InmanStories

Not a real estate site per se, but a video production and private label "video magazine" service for realtors and realty companies. Run by Brad Inman, who is also behind local video and travel site, TurnHere.com, the site offers the emerging online ad medium of video to real estate industry professionals.

Move.com

Late last month, Homestore re-branded under the URL Move.com. The new site is positioned as a real-estate vertical "search engine" for all things related to buying, renting and relocation. As mentioned above, the Move.com network was the traffic leader according to comScore. In addition to the Move site, Homestore operates a range of websites, including Realtor.com, Welcome Wagon, Moving.com, SeniorHousingNet, and Homeplans.com. Those URLs survive, while the Move.com site replaces Homestore.com, HomeBuilder.com, Factorybuilthousing.com and RentNet.com.

MSN Real Estate

MSN Real Estate was the biggest mover (so to speak) in the most recent comScore real estate site rankings. Microsoft also operates Windows Live Expo, its classifieds marketplace (in beta), which includes free housing listings

MyNewPlace

MyNewPlace services the rental market. The map-based presentation of listings makes it similar to other sites, especially Trulia (below). However, MyNewPlace focuses exclusively on rentals and not on buying or selling. eBay-owned Rent.com, newspaper-owned Apartments.com and Craigslist are competitors.

Perhaps of greatest interest, the site has adopted the offline practice of changing a "commission" for leases actually signed, in this case a flat fee of $375 regardless of the unit or location. In other words every rental lead successfully delivered by the site and closed generates $375 for MyNewPlace - a cost per action model. The way MyNewPace polices and tracks successful closes is by paying a rebate ($100) to the renter. The renter claims the rebate and MyNewPlace knows the deal has been done - viola, perfect tracking!

PropertyShark

PropertyShark says it has photographed every single property in Manhattan, a feat that will be challenging to duplicate as it rolls out across the country. PropertyShark also says that it has data on every property in the markets it currently serves (17 cities), not just homes for sale or rentals. It claims to have data that are not available on other real estate sites, such as "pre-foreclosure" and foreclosure information. Maps are heavily featured on the site as well.

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Redfin

Like HomePages, Seattle-based Redfin.com was an early "mashup" site, using maps as a primary navigation tool. Redfin recently announced new funding and that it was rolling out nationally. The site also shifted its business model from advertising to that of a discount broker-agent. Redfin now actually helps individuals buy and sell homes and claims it is involved in 1 percent of all transactions in the greater Seattle area today. It charges reduced fees and commissions, providing rebates to buyers, as much as $10,000 on a $500,000 sale.

SpotRunner

Like InmanStories, SpotRunner isn't a consumer destination but a marketing tool for small businesses. SpotRunner is an Internet-based media buying platform for cable television air time, targeting local advertisers. It offers hundreds of hours of professionally pre-produced, vertically organized "creative" (TV commercials) that can be customized. The company recently partnered with Cendant, the world's largest franchisor of real estate brokerage offices, including Century21 and Coldwell Banker. In the context of that deal, SpotRunner has offered special customization options to local realtors.

StreetEasy

Operating exclusively in New York City, StreetEasy is reputed by locals to be one of the best real estate sites for both rental property and homes for sale in the city.

Trulia

Another real estate search engine using a map-based interface, Trulia has national aspirations and plans to be available across the U.S. by the end of 2006. Trulia has been busy building out product features including sales trend data, crime statistics, local schools information and demographics, among other data. One of the most user-friendly of all the consumer real estate sites, it offers personalization and alerts (via email or RSS). The site is offering performance-based advertising to local realtors and brokers. Listings data come from local realtor sites. Movoto offers a similar look and feel and functionality on a much smaller scale, in two California counties.

Zillow

Yet another Seattle-based site, Zillow, which stands for "zillions of pillows,"offers a range of impressive tools for buyers and sellers but, curiously, no for-sale listings. Zillow is the ninth most popular site according to comScore, owing partly to curiosity about the potential sale value of one's home and the neighbor's house as well. It makes money off of advertising and traffic has grown rapidly in the four months the site has been live. Zillow has also recently licensed Microsoft's "Birds Eye" aerial photography, which is so far unique among real estate verticals. Before launch, earlier this year, Zillow received $32 million in venture capital money from Benchmark Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures.

Chris reviewed Zillow right after its March 2006 launch in the SearchDay article Finding the Values of US Homes.

There are many more well established sites (e.g., Yahoo Real Estate or Craigslist and lesser known niche sites that populate the online real estate landscape. Like other verticals online, real estate is a fragmented marketplace with literally thousands of broker and realtor sites each featuring a small number of listings. Each new competitor, even the national aggregators, makes it only more competitive and fragmented. Organizing and rationalizing these disparate sites into a network or more coherent marketplace that brings buyers and sellers together efficiently is what many of the providers above are now trying to accomplish.

Going forward, massive national aggregators like Move.com that offer comprehensivenes and marketing muscle will be pitted against niche sites like StreetEasy that bring depth and focus to single markets. But regardless of how the competitive landscape shakes out, one can expect online to claim a bigger share of real estate marketing dollars in the very near term. Even though the world is now much more complicated for both buyers and sellers, the richness and functionality of online real estate with maps, video and virtual tours make it very hard to go back to the black and white world of the local newspaper.

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3611756

Technorati Tags: Real Estate Search Engine

Zillow Update

Blog The Walk-Through gives us updates on  Zillow.com. Now, if you type in an address for NYC, SF, Boston, LV, LA or Seattle and you’ll get an aerial shot of the property, at a 45-degree angle. According to the same source,the company said it now displays information on 65.2 million homes and has price estimates for 47 million of them. The company also has improved the algorithm for the My Zestimate.

Zillow Improvements(TheWalk-Through)

Tags: Zillow.com, The Walk-Through

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Attack on 6% Commission-New Way of Doing Business

This can be related to the previous post. BuySideRealty,with their clients doing much of the grunt work, the new "rebaters" are happy to take less for the services that the buyers still require, was launched in California, Illinois and Florida and expects to be nationwide by early 2008, returns three-quarters of the buyer's agent's share to clients.

"Finding the house is probably 75 percent of the work," says Joe Fox, CEO of BuySide, one of those new, Web-based businesses. "Why not give [buyers] 75 percent of the commission?"

Mac McNear, a spokesman for one of these companies, BuySide Realty, says, "Our agents never leave their offices. Buyers find listings themselves, but they don't accompany the buyers on their visits."

A fresh attack on the 6% commission(CNN)

Tags: 6% commission

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Craiglist & Google in Real Estate Business

Craigslist.com and Google.com are emerging as places to shop for residential real estate, a development that in the long term could weaken Realtors' hold on home selling.

Listings of real estate for sale on Craigslist, a popular Web site featuring free classified ads, rose to 335,126 in March. Several more specialized sites launched in the past year -- including Trulia.com, Oodle.com and Propsmart.com -- offer free access to substantial numbers of listings.

Google in November began allowing consumers and businesses to directly submit content such as real-estate listings for inclusion in some Google search results through a service called Base. Google previously included real-estate listings from sites it came across, but they weren't always up-to-date and couldn't easily be sorted by price and other attributes. In March, Google began on a test basis letting consumers who were searching terms such as "Los Angeles real estate" narrow their results by choosing various categories -- saying whether they want to rent or buy, for example -- and letting them see real-estate listings plotted on a map.

Google and Craigslist May Weaken Realtors' Hold on Home Listings (RealEstateJournal)

Tags: Google, Craiglist

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The Internet-New Tool for House Hunters

These are the passages from CNN story about the best position for finding a perfect home, followed by the last year buying pattern. The forecast is that spring will bring increased shopping for new homes. I am little skeptic about this…

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According to Gillespie, a California study reported that when buyers start their shopping on line they're able to complete the buy in two weeks after they start working with a salesperson and they view just 6.2 homes. If they don't shop on line, the process takes an average of seven weeks and they see 14 homes.

Several new Web tools have come on line or into wide use during the past 12 months These include:

1) Zillow.com enables buyers to get an online estimate of the market value of their house, as well as others in their neighborhood. (For more, see, What's your home worth, Get a 'Zestimate')

2) Homepages.com offers high resolution aerial photography of neighborhoods that enables shoppers to drill down into the details of what kinds of amenities and facilities it offers. HomePages marketing director Matt Heinz says users can zoom in on parks, for example, to see if they have basketball courts, a dog run or playground equipment. Click on a school building and data such as test scores appears.

3) Broker web sites have added many useful tools since last spring. There are more photos, slide shows and virtual tours than ever and much new information is available as well.

4) Real estate blogs. Get the real skinny on a new neighborhood before you buy. Many new blogs offer tons of raw, unedited, un-fact-checked info on places all over the country. Is that Mexican fusion restaurant any good? How are the new condos on Main Street selling? Which are the best schools? The blogs have the answers, although you can't count on them for total accuracy.

Spring buying season: old rules, new tools(CNN)

Real Estate Search Site

Charlene Li of Jupiter has an important post on real estate search....

www.realtor.com

www.movoto.com

www.trulia.com

www.homepages.com

www.zillow.com

http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/2006/03/my_house_hunt_a.html

Tags: Real Estate Search Site