…is up at The Future of Real Estate Marketing.
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Category: Blogging (page 82 of 84)
The BubbleBrains swooped in en masse today, having only just now discovered my 21 reasons to bank on the Phoenix real estate market. Courage, confidence and competence are often found together in a solitary soul, but cowardice, cowering and impotence — these are the attributes of character of men who run in packs. I am more than libertarian enough to let them go to hell in their own way, but it seems only common courtesy to point the way. So I sent them hither and thither — blithering Bubbleheads lathered up into a dither. Now that’s just good, clean fun.
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I live in Safari, an exceptionally adept tabbed web browser. In consequence, I can pile up page after page of stuff, each crammed with semi-organized tabs, that I intend to deal with later. Well, fast is the new slow and later is now — at least for the moment.
How will the TruZillia APIs make money? Volume! Baron Briefs has a richer answer:
My initial thought on why each would do this: By opening up Zestimates and Zindices to the masses, Zillow is following in the foot steps of major players like Amazon and Google…build an API, let others innovate off the technology, and then acquire the best of breed. Remember, they recently picked up an extra $25 million to “broaden their product offering”. As far as TruliaMap, it’s likely an attempt to win over agents and brokers who haven’t warmed up to the idea of their website being crawled and scraped. Now, they get a cool widget for their website and Trulia gets access to more listings.
Galen Ward at Rain City Guide has more, including sightings of the Great Kong, the 900 pound gorilla that is Google. And: Will brokers embrace Trulia’s maps?:
In other news, Trulia is now letting you post their listings on your site. They say it’s for agents and brokers, but do agents and brokers really want to steer people away from their web sites? If a visitor clicks on More details… they are whisked to the listing agent’s website. I predict that it will mostly be used by bloggers and non-real estate people.
The Real Estate Newsblog takes exception, sotto voce, to to my criticisms of Zillow.com’s epistemology:
I guess a significant problem for Zillow at the moment is credibility. Some suggest that Zillow’s “Zestimates” are way off base, but since they’re still in beta, it’s probably slightly premature to be overly critical at this point, notwithstanding the near $60 million they’ve got in seed money.
In fact, for the reason I named, Zillow.com cannot ever produce a reliable evaluation of a house. This is not a matter of refinement, it’s a fundamental defect in the epistemological model they’re working from. Read more
…about Trulia.com casting their net of free map-mash-ups all over the place? How about Redfin.com? Unless they have another fish in their pocket, they are now head-to-head competitors with ZipRealty.com, HelpUSell.com, Assist2Sell.com, etc.
Bottom-feeders of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your investment capital!
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Color me grateful, but one benefit of the Trulia/Zillow free APIs for Realtor web sites is that we should see the end of the sleazy practice of making dewy-eyed anonymous-by-preference Google-borne immigrants fill out a form to search the MLS listings.
This crap is straight out of Dan Gooder, but, just as less is more, Gooder is worse. Acolytes of The Church of Seth know better. Interruption marketing (what Trulia and Zillow plan to do) is bad, but hostage-taking is insufferable.
It’s strictly a matter of serendipity that Seth Godin has the same first name as Cain and Abel’s other brother, but here is a Golden Rule more precious than gold itself: If the tables were turned, how would you want to be treated? If you — out of curiosity or because you want to invest in another town or because you want to move your widowed mother into a better neighborhood — visit another Realtor’s web site, do you want to surrender your personal details just to surf the local MLS? If not, then why would you do this to your own potential clients?
Luckily for the rest of us, we probably won’t have to wait for the Gooderites to discover a better morality. The TruZillow sites will be free — as Stewart Brand always wanted them to be — and the sites that continue to cower behind Berlin Wall-like contact-info forms will be neglected.
And — it just occurs to me — the Truliactive and Zillowized sites will probably be linked from Trulia.com and Zillow.com, which has SEO implications. And now I’m interested…
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The software specification shown hear harkens back to this weblog post in reaction to The Future of Real Estate Marketing‘s remarks on ShackYack.com, a particulary robust real estate seach tool using a Google Maps mash-up for its interface. Cathy and I designed this as a futher elaboration on the ShackYack.com model. Given that maps are now free (shudder!), there’s is no reason to hoard this design, and every good reason to throw it out to the world in the hopes that someone will implement these ideas.
PROBLEM: MLS search systems (at least ours) are inadequate. The programmers aim for easy-to-use interfaces with no SQL-like access to the data.
PROBLEM: End-user search systems (like IDX) are inadequate, too dumbed down and unsatisfying.
PROBLEM: Neither sort of search is comprehensive; only MLS listings are shown.
PROBLEM: Either sort of search leaves too many unanswered questions.
OPPORTUNITY: A search system like ShackYack.com is very satisfying, even if it is still inadequate and limited.
SOLUTION: Mash it all even more: A ShackYack-like interface to a high-octane search engine (extensible on the fly so as not to be too daunting) of both MLS and XML-fed or user-entered FSBO listings, with on-line shopping-like features, side-by-side comparison features, user selection and exclusion, and, finally Zillowish comping of the short list against active and sold listings — all of this still and always reflected on the ShackYack-like interface.
I. Search. Full SQL/RDBMS, reflected in the user-interface.
II. Database. Full local MLS plus any acquirable XML feeds of FSBOs, with a form for do-it-yourself one-off FSBOs. ShackYack is using shades of gray to reflect relative price, but it would make more sense to me to use separate colors and shades of those colors to reflect types and relationships of listings.
III. Search interface. Basic search always visible, with pop-outs to add or remove more robust types of search categories. If some MLS data is limited to members, as it is now, certain search categories would be available only to logged-in MLS members. The trouble with a ShackYack-like search is that too many pertinent criteria are missing. It’s fun to play with, but for a true home search, you’d be Read more
…I don’t get it.
The Future of Real Estate Marketing avers that Trulia.com’s release of its map interface is a shudder-inducing disaster for other developers. This on the heels of yesterday’s reporting on Zillow.com’s release of its API to individual brokerages. There’s more news on both announcements at RealtyThoughts.
Is this exciting news for Realtors? Possibly. Gee whiz technology is like CheezWhiz — a little goes a long way. There may actually be a qualified, motivated real estate buyer who says, “If only I could see all the properties on an interactive map.” If so, that person is only surrounded by eleven other qualified, motivated buyers saying, “If only there were more photos…”
That’s as may be, and this stuff will surely be deployed. If I were Trulia.com, I would hook into that Zillow.com back-end and disintermediate the behotches: All the usual Truila details-in-a-box plus the completely unreliable Zestimate. If Zillow won’t roll over, someone else will.
But this is my question: How the hell are either of these two quivering little firms going to make money on this? “Advertising!” they shout in unison, but the advertising is on their home pages, where these APIs aren’t. Each one has a little click-back button to take self-selected volunteers back to the home planet. But if I’m getting the milk for free at LargelyUnobjectionableAtlantaHomes.com, why the heck would I go to the dairy?
If anybody’s shuddering it could be because they’re getting the not-too-subtle idea that what the “2.0” in Web 2.0 means is that investors will be shooting themselves in both feet this time…
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I read about realPING on the Zillow.com weblog’s coverage of Real Estate Connect in San Francisco. I never think about something until I do. This morning Cathy mentioned the idea of having something on our web pages that would induce prospects to contact us. We have a big phone number on the BloodhoundRealty.com website, but she was looking for something at once sexier and more hi-tech. I did my best not to think about this all day, and then, when my thoughts should have lightly turned to thoughts of slumber, I saw the realPING page.
This is really dumb technology. I never know for sure how much other people understand of software, but I can reverse engineer just about anything I see running — in the abstract, anyway. Understanding an algorithm is a lot easier than replicating it — unless it’s something really dumb like realPING.
I just wrote the basic functionality. The “Get Tracking!” button in the sidebar took longer to make than did GetTracking.php. All I have right now is the basic paging function, not the on-and-off for business hours business, but that’s simple to mimic, also. What I have is a clean-room perfect clone, reverse engineered solely from the descriptive promotional material made available on realPING’s home page. (I didn’t even drill down to sub-pages.)
Here’s my offer:
I will make my PHP files for this function available to you as PromoWare: You put me in your blogroll and the software is yours. No cost, no further obligation, no contracts, no monthly fees, no salesman will call. However: You hold your own hand for installation and support.
To take advantage of this offer, you need two things:
- The site this runs from must have PHP installed on it with the mail functions turned on
- You need a mobile phone or other device that can receive email or epages sent as email from PHP
Ninety percent of everybody reading this will have both of these things, but if you don’t know, the person you check with is the one who should do the installation and support hand-holding.
I wish I had more time to write software. The other Read more
Citing an article from the Boston Globe, the Real Estate Investing For Real bog insists that:
There should be a system where anyone, real estate agents, FSBOs, etc., can list or search for properties.
Great news! Such a tool exists. It’s called the classified section of the newspaper. Not so cheap to list, but searching costs around half-a-buck. Even better, CraigsList.com is free in most markets.
The good news is, the writer already has what he wants — in vast abundance: CraigsList.com, Trulia.com, PropSmart.com, et infinitely cetera. The bad news is, the writer already has what he wants — vastly abundant free or nearly-free listing portals, each of which has its own data structure and feed format. The geniuses who are bringing us all this cleverly-designed white noise don’t actually understand the problems the MLS was created to solve: open listings and the difficulty of coordinating cooperation among agents from different brokerages. So what do we find on CraigsList.com, Trulia.com, PropSmart.com, et infinitely cetera? Open listings and no provision for coordinating cooperation among agents. O!, Brave New World, simultaneously disintermediated and reambiguated. It’s hard to regard this as an improvement.
What the writer really wants is something very much like the MLS, but without exclusive membership, without the mandatory unilateral offer of compensation and without the intellectual property rights of listing brokers. You could say he wants to eat his cake and still have it, but the sad part is, he just might get his wish. Even as loose as we are about internet businesses, I’m pretty sure the Feds would regard such a thing arising privately as collusion. But if the Feds ram it down our throats instead…
The cure for what the writer thinks ails us might be a lot worse than the disease.
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Snipped from the speech Redfin.com CEO Glenn Kelman made yesterday to a Congressional subcommittee:
that we must register our users
He said a lot more than this, of course, and you might go read it all. But much of what he said sounded to me like complaints that Redfin has been expected to hew to the same real estate laws as every other brokerage in Washington or California. The quoted matter in particular, “that we must register our users”, sounds as if Kelman is objecting to even the most minimal interpretation of procuring cause. Too late, we learn the unhappy consequences of not teaching The Little Red Hen in the schools…
Marlow Harris at 360Digest.com has much, much more.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
None of this is new to me — except for the parts that are.
I’ve been writing on the nets since before there were nets. Since BBS systems — I ran two of them at different times of my life. Since CompuServe was a time-share system called MicroNet that charged $3.00 an hour for half-duplex transmission at 300 baud.
(Think about that! “Baud” is Bits of Audio Data. My first modem had an acoustic coupler that attached to a phone receiver and transmitted data with actual, annoyingly audible sound. It raced along at 300 bits per second, which sounds slow but is actually about half-again faster than a really fast typist. The connection through which I am by now continuously enthralled is only about 10,000 times faster than that.)
I’ve been writing on the nets since the time when you would log on, suck down everything you wanted to look at as fast as you could, read and respond off-line, then log back on to blast back your own contributions without wasting a second. I’ve been writing on the nets since waiting up for the “off-peak” hours represented a substantial savings.
The funny things is, when the technology was that grossly inadequate, that obscenely expensive, I was writing maybe 8,000 words a day, seven days a week. And as lousy as everything was, it was a whole lot better than working on a 900 pound IBM Selectric typewriter.
I can barely believe the things I did in those days. With my trusty soldering gun, I built myself a little NULL modem that I could configure on the fly, so I could liberate access wherever I found a temporarily mute dumb terminal. I was young and possessed at the time of a multi-faceted morality, and I tended to think of electrical power and underutilized bandwidth as mine to appropriate.
I wrote through generation after generation of computer hardware and network topography, avidly connecting machines that were never meant to be connected and connecting my own computers to a topology that was still called Arpanet when I first started playing with it.
I worked in Usenet for years, and I Read more
Searchlight Crusade is hosting this week’s Carnival of Real Estate. BloodhoundBlog is featured, insisting that there is always room at the top, and we are lucky to be among such an august company. Everything is worth reading, but two posts stand out for me: Spotlight Realty’s practical example of the risk of letting an unscrupulous agent “buy” your listing by promising you a higher price than the market warrants. And The Reality of Real Estate weighs in on a weighty topic: How exclusive employment agreements can be a disservice to the client.
On the latter point, here is language we routinely use on our Buyer Broker Agreements:
This agreement will be terminated without recourse upon written notice by either party.
“Either party” means I get to fire them if I want to, too (and I have done this). “Without recourse” means clients don’t get to fire me and then sue me. I don’t know that that clause will hold up in court, but it’s worth a shot. We use slightly different language on listing contracts, to make it plain that you don’t get to fire us when we’re already under contract (and, of course, practically speaking, as a matter of agency I cannot fire any client when doing so would be to the client’s detriment; a ship’s captain cannot resign under weigh). But, recalling that everything we do is marketing, granting clients the power to jump ship, if they feel they must, is a very effective way of winning their hearts and minds. If you love your clients, set them free…
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The Real Estate Bloggers have a post on using YouTube video to sell homes:
As more people are using high speed bandwidth, the smart real estate agents are using tools such as YouTube to put listings on the internet. This McKinney, Texas real estate agent put together a 40 second teaser video that gives potential buyers a view of this golf course home.
I don’t hate the idea, in general, but I have specific caveats. First, the cited video isn’t really a video, it’s Ken Burns-style panning and zooming on still photos. Second, the house doesn’t seem to me to warrant a big send-up. An Ugly Step Sister with her own Fairy Godmother is still an Ugly Step Sister. Third, and much worse, YouTube.com‘s video quality is… much worse. For now, at least, a first-quality virtual tour — or better-quality video — seems like a better choice.
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