"Seeing" the future of online real estate

A couple weeks ago, Frontdoor.com released its City Guides product [Disclosure: Frontdoor.com is a 1000watt Consulting client]. This is worth noting for several reasons. The user experience is first rate; the balance between content and design, data and vibe is pitch perfect; it supports the decision to live a life somewhere, not just to buy a house.

Their implementation of real estate-relevant APIs is well done. They've done a great job organizing Yelp reviews in each city, and display local events through eventful.

A slice of life

But it's their use of Flickr that got me thinking.

Flikr has been around for a long time. It has been plugged into thousands of websites and blogs. But the volume of geotagged photos it holds is now to a point where users can get a good visual sense for most any place. Frontdoor.com is taking advantage of this.

Check out Fairfield, CA

Or Athens, Georgia.

Or how about this: My wife is from Marshall, MN, a small town way out in corn country. Flikr brings it to life. This image illustrates why my wife now lives in California. 

You get a slice of life from each of these places, usually seen through the eyes of people who live there. I may know that Athens is a college town, but now I can actually see what a University of Georgia college student looks like these days. I can look at a map of Marshall mashed up with points of interest, but this gets me deeper. 

These photos pull you back from the tight focus on the home and touch on the blurry edges of decision making. And this, I think, presents really interesting possibilities for online real estate.

I am not certain what those possibilities will amount to. But the confluence of visual search, location awareness, Street View, online video, and massive stores of goetagged photos will get us closer to "virtual real estate" than we could have imagined even five years ago.

Something else to consider: There are hundreds of millions of photos sitting within MLS systems across the country. Most brokers have thousands of images they're not using. We focus so much on listings data; is there hidden value in the images?

-- Brian Boero

Show me the market!

You may have noticed I am a big advocate of putting real estate market information into the hands of consumers.

During most of the boom years, buyers and sellers made life-changing decisions based on thin slices of information. A few comps fished from the MLS. County-level market trends. And, too often, uninformed or skewed interpretations from their agent.

Sure, there were the monthly numbers from NAR. Or the Case-Shiller Index. But they lagged badly. "Recent" sales data on the web were not recent enough.

Zillow and Trulia improved the situation and should be commended for it. They served up tons of market metrics and nailed the user experience. But they were based on some of the same old data, or used fresher data that represented but a fraction of the total available in a given market.

This lead to my bullishness for the MLS: For they have fresh data, all of it. The problem is that MLSs and the brokers they support generally have no idea how to shape that data into something usable.

That is now changing.

Here are some examples:

The Minneapolis Area Association of REALTORS, in partnership with Northstar MLS, recently launched a suite of market reports that are very well done. A detailed summary for their entire region is produced each week; numbers for 100 area communities are published monthly. The visualization of the data is excellent and intelligent commentary is paired with the hard numbers. MAAR even created a blog -- "The Skinny" -- through which they publish and comment on the data.

Jeff Allen, Research Manager at MAAR, tells me the information is being gobbled up by consumers and professionals alike.

There are obvious limitations here (that reports are only available via PDF is the most problematic), but they intend to address them in the coming months.

I have discussed Redfin's use of IDX to create market metrics before. They have done an amazing job. But Estately appears to have made some nice moves in this area as well. They offer neighborhood level market pages that present at-a-glance views of the price median, inventory and days on market. This, again, is based on their use of IDX. 

Top Producer made an early move with their Market Snapshot product. While it's a vastly superior option for agents looking to move beyond marketing with recipes and saccharine proclamations of home ownership dreams come true, it suffers, in my opinion, from some data visualization issues.

I understand MLS data aren't perfect. And, yes, brokers in some markets still play hard-to-get with their listings. But the bottom line is clear: The MLS is the fountainhead of possibility for delivering consumers current, reliable, hyperlocal real estate market information. Brokers, associations and technology companies are starting to tap into it.

And that's exciting.

-- Brian Boero

The MLS moment

We're bullish on MLS. Or rather, the potential that lies within most MLS organizations. In fact, Marc and I think MLSs hold some of the most exciting possibilities in real estate and technology in 2009.

I know that may sound odd, and more than a little naive. For those of us with a close-in view of the MLS world, it seems at times hopelessly hamstrung by politics. Those just a little further removed see a fragmented, somewhat mysterious assortment of acronyms.

But let's step back for a minute. Way back. Out to Mars. Looked at from this perspective -- with political fault lines and puzzling borders blurred -- we see an industry in a pretty compelling position.

Here's why:

1. MLSs have the most valuable content assets in their entire category. And content, as we know, is King. No one touches them on quantity or quality.

2. MLSs have market share, adoption rates and, as a result, a distribution channel that is the envy of any other business entity on the face of the planet. Never mind why that is. It is.

3. The best and the brightest are lined up outside MLS doors. Everyone wants to do business with the MLS. There must be some value there, huh?

4. It appears as if users of the MLS really need it. It looks to pass the "if it disappeared tomorrow, would you really care?" test. That type of utility means the MLSs are not only relevant, but can solve problems for their customers.

These realities don't disappear when we come back to Earth; we just lose a clear view of them.

That was the crux of a presentation we gave to several hundred MLS executives at NAR a couple months ago: You can kick ass -- but you had better get moving. Click here for the slide deck, or view it below. You'll miss a lot of the details without the discussion, but it's a broad outline of our observations.

It starts with your brand. Yes, an MLS is a brand, and a brand is a unit of meaning. Ask yourself, "what does [my MLS here] mean? If you can't answer that in two seconds, you've identified a core problem.

We offer some ideas for moving forward with this broader perspective, but the important thing is in the stepping back. 

We absolutely believe:

1. Brokers have no better partner for surviving this market than their MLS

2. MLS organizations can take a leadership position in the online real estate category

3. Consumers -- and the Realtors that serve them -- can benefit immeasurably from products built by, or off of, the MLS (API, anyone?).

But that can only happen if MLS leaders step back and look at the bigger picture, forfeit near-term comfort for long-term value, and start messing with the playbook.

Last week at Inman, I moderated a woefully short session on the future or MLS that featured leaders that have done it. David Charron at MRIS [disclosure: 1000watt Consulting has performed work for MRIS] and Bud Fogel at Midwest Regional Data see the big picture and have done the hard work of sharing it with others.

It is my hope that more join them this year. I think they will be rewarded.

Here's the presentation:

MLS: A view from Mars

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Business Presentations & Slid branding real estate

Google's OpenSocial and the future of the MLS

Brian published this post back on November 6th, 2007. The observations he made then about the social implications and viability of the MLS resonate today -- Marc

I’ve been chewing on the idea of Google’s OpenSocial for the past few days. I’d like to draw some direct connections to real estate, but I’d be stretching. As big a deal as it is in the wider world, it seems but a tangent to the real estate sphere at the moment.

Social networks surely hold opportunity for real estate practitioners. ActiveRain has demonstrated that. But the consumer-facing prospects have yet to come into focus. While examples of blogging success abound, cases of leveraging mass-market social networks to grow a real estate practice are next to non-existent (if you’re aware of one, I’d love to hear about it). And while it is certain that some online real estate companies will develop applications using the OpenSocial APIs, I don’t see any game-changing moves on the horizon.

The real value of the OpenSocial announcement for real estate is thus instructive. An object lesson on what might be – for MLS organizations and the NAR in particular.

Here’s one way we might look at this:

Consider that the MLS is really a social network. Its value has always been much more than as a warehouse for listings. It’s the marketplace, the cooperative -- the network of people with similar interests doing business -- that gives it its juice. Hang a few features off the core interface, say, a facebook-like profile with professional preferences and other elements of the “social graph”, and the decidedly uncool MLS starts looking pretty hip – and much more valuable.

This would be a “socialized” MLS. But one that is still walled in, limited by its increasingly problematic geographic boundaries. But what if NAR ceased conjuring a fantastical “gateway” that will take years to build and created a series of APIs -- children of RETS, if you will – that enabled vendors and MLS organizations themselves to inject simple applications into Web-based MLS systems?

Rather than drawing yet another circle around the outside of the listings world, why not create new pathways into it and let a thousand flowers bloom, as they say?

In this scenario, MarketLinx, Paragon and Rappattoni and the like are the real estate equivalents of LinkedIn, Orkut and Friendster – the parties who adopt the API protocols. Like OpenSocial, these APIs would respect the business and community rules of participating partners. Data integrity and ownership would be protected and worlds of new value would be unlocked for MLS organizations and their members.

Michael Wurzer over at FBS Blog has examined these issues with far greater insight than I have here. And there are MLS organizations cooking up progressive initiatives. But from my position on the periphery, it looks like far more need to embrace and advocate for the ethos represented by OpenSocial if they are to remain competitive.

-- Brian Boero

Real estate on steroids

Stattweets launched today, enabling sports fans to follow their favorite teams, get spreads, scores, standings, ranks etc.

The idea isn't new but their angle is. The content here is broadcast direct from the teams themselves rather than from the arbitrary public. 

Immediate info.
Direct from the source.
I love this.
 
And I would love this from real estate.

Imagine a REStatweets that broadcast Just listed, Just sold, Pending, local stats and spreads from every major, minor and collegiate real estate brand locally and nationally. 

Subscribers might include agents and brokers who would be able to acquire new listing information from any or every one of the brokerage brands listed in the network. If agent A gets a listing right this second, how much time would elapse before that listing is uploaded into the MLS and broadcast to out to the agent population? How much time would it take before it's broadcast out to the marketplace?

REstattweets could reduce that down to seconds. 

This does not replace the MLS. It simply acts a surrogate service that gets the ball rolling quickly. It's a listing alert on steroids. It's an open house alert on steroids. It's what's happening on every block on steroids. 

It's real estate on steroids.
 
Consumers could subscribe too. Now, I know sports engenders a certain fanaticism that you may think real estate does not have. But I'm not dribbling in that end of the logic court. I believe real estate is addictive. I believe it's voyeuristic. And I believe those who work inside it (agents, title reps, mortgage orginators, and the like) as well as those outside - the consumer - possess a healthy passion for it.

Especially now.

Micro-broadcasting in real estate is still in its infancy. Early adopters are currently focused on broadcasting about themselves and what they are doing. I've learned there is value there but I am still convinced that content only has a few seconds of real relevancy and pales in value to reporting useful data. 

Sports might be apples to real estate's oranges. But data is data. Any engine that could power the instant delivery of it is one I believe is worth subscribing to, paying for and driving. 

- Davison
Twitter: 1000wattmarc

Roost gets $8 million: I have a few questions

I like Roost. The search experience is really good -- at least until the user is redirected to a brokerage site, which is, in most cases, pretty jarring. The company also provides a nice example of what can be done with IDX when serious UI talent is in the picture.

Congratulations are in order for Alex Chang and his team.

But I have some questions.

First, is now a good time for brokers to make CPC/CPA buys?

The latest research from CAR and NAR show buyers are taking a lot longer to browse for homes before contacting an agent. That's months of paying for clicks with a fairly low conversion rate. With syndication to the point of ubiquity nearly free, selling clicks that are no more qualified than referrals from listings aggregators -- even through an IDX site that is technically the broker's -- may be a tough sell.

Unless the volume is tremendous.

Which brings me to my second question:

Does Roost have the ability to drive the traffic needed to expand the network both horizontally and within markets to a point where they become a market-leading solution?

The company has talked a lot about the coverage benefits of their IDX-based solution versus broker feed-based sites, but said almost nothing about traffic. But I think it is safe to assume they lag far behind the category leaders.

HomeGain did well selling clicks. They grew to be a large, profitable company and had a successful liquidity event. But they had 5 million uniques each month. It is unclear to me how Roost gets here.

Last question: Will the limitations of IDX ultimately outweigh the benefits?

While the upside of an IDX search experience is clear (I've written many times about its benefits), the limitations from a business perspective are pretty daunting. Fields are limited. The content that can be displayed with it is too. There's a reason Trulia and Zillow went the broker feed route. Avoiding these impediments is one of them.

Practically speaking, this limits what Roost might do to address the traffic question. The widgets, content and link structure that have been key to Trulia's kick-ass search engine effort are largely off-limits to the company. 

Moreover, the tension between stickiness and referrals most online real estate sites face (meaning, the judgment as to how long a site keep can or should keep the visitor engaged before sending them off to the listing partner) is very taught. Unlike Zillow, for example, which offers basic listings display for free, and thus has wiggle room to monetize the user through ad impressions, Roost is getting paid for clicks. That means traffic-building content and fora don't make a lot of sense.

That's what comes to mind for me. I would love to be convinced that I am off base on all of this because, lord knows, we could use a few happy real estate stories.

-- Brian Boero

Hell breaks loose in the new listings war

I returned from my vacation last week to find my inbox and reader filled with talk about listing coverage, comprehensiveness and quality sparked by a somewhat ham-fisted PR gambit by Roost.

I had just written about this the week before. It's been a pet peeve of mine for a long time. The fact that many of the most celebrated and trafficked real estate sites offer consumers a woefully inadequate view of the market is problematic.

Offering 70% of the inventory is OK when you're selling, say, digital cameras; it is not OK when you're claiming, with full--throated cries of "transparency" and consumer love, to help people make the most important decision of their lives.

Real estate has always claimed a certain kind of exceptionalism. Homes are not airplane tickets. Realtors are not stock brokers. And not seeing the perfect home in the next neighborhood over carries more consequences than not getting that new pair of Crocs in the color you really wanted.

I know: IDX is not perfect. And offering a full picture of the market dictates following Redfin's lead by offering MLS listings, foreclosures (many of which are in the MLS as well), and FSBO's side-by-side. But online real estate can and should do better than the gossamer fiber of broker feeds holding together otherwise great sites like Trulia and Zillow.

At the risk of sounding like a pedantic buzz-kill, I must admit that I found it hard to get truly excited about Trulia's nicely executed iPhone app and smart commitment to mobile, when I know, sitting on my deck searching "all homes for sale" on my phone, that what I am actually getting is something different.

I am left feeling that this sort of innovation is akin to a restaurant that obsesses on the dishware -- the means of delivery -- but drops the ball on the food.

I am not picking on Trulia. I just wish they and others would circle back to and nail down some basic content requirements.

So I hope the debate continues. It's healthy - and necessary.

-- Brian Boero

An insider's smile

I re-read the NAR/DOJ settlement document over the weekend following a detailed discussion with a client. The language below didn't jump out at me before, but made me smile the second time around.

"An MLS may not refuse to deal directly with an AVP in order to resolve technical

problems with the data feed. However, the MLS may require that the Participant on

whose behalf the AVP is operating the VOW participate in such communications if the

MLS reasonably believes that the involvement of the Participant would be helpful in order

to resolve the problem."

As someone who has worked on behalf of brokers to set up listings feeds, this clause brought me back to some not-so-great times. But, more importantly, it represents a small victory for:

• Any website vendor who's been simultaneously yelled at by a broker client and stonewalled by an MLS "IT guy"
• Any IDX/VOW solution provider who's had to suggest to a client that they email an MLS exec. to resolve a problem with their feed
• Any broker who's pushing the envelope on listings display on their website
• Technology company customer service reps, who too often play powerless middleman between practitioners and the MLS

Of course, there are MLSs that were always on this and recognized that empowering vendors empowered their members. But for the grizzled and smudged workers in the IDX/VOW business, this is cause for quiet celebration. Or at least an after work beer.

-- Brian Boero

Web 2.0's knockin' but can't come in

Web 2.0’s seeming failure to birth bankable revenue streams or sustainable business models in real estate reflects glaringly off its windshield. Many are bracing for a crash.

The conventional cash register isn’t ringing, but convention is overrated these days.

A segue

I think we can all agree that building a relationship is the truest segue to creating a client. But when real estate emerged online over a decade ago it made a conscious decision to forgo that time honored method of building business. Instead, it lunged at the consumer. Baited. Switched. You know the rap.

Web 2.0 emerged in our space, in a significant way, in 2005. Which was just about the time real estate finally grokked the merits of Web 1.0 -- which by then, ironically, were no longer merits.

Web 2.0 offered our industry something so vital, so apparent, so true to its nature: A new way to have a conversation with the customer, the prospect, the neighbors. It offered real estate the chance to get belly-to-belly with them where, increasingly, they hung out - online. Monitor to Monitor. Blog to Blog.  Comment to comment.

Blogs were but one vehicle for making this happen. There were others. Web 2.0 offered real estate a chance to move beyond the multi-colored yarn of rhetoric spun from marketing departments and executive suites.

Web 2.0 offered real estate a chance to step through the window and view its soul. And it gave consumers a way to nibble at its service on their terms in a simple manner.

Web 2.0 was about better searching. More homes across MLS divides. Solds. All swimming in a robust glob of data gravy. With maps. And street views.

Web 2.0 gave consumers a chance to ask questions about property and places online. And it offered real estate a chance to provide the answers. It offered consumers a chance to rate those answers. And independent contractors. And companies. Just like can any other independent contractor or business on the host of rating sites across the web.

Web 2.0 gave real estate pros new ways to write about what they really know - their neighborhoods. Their markets. Individual homes. Parks, schools, roads, weather.

Web 2.0 gave us video, arguably the single most important vehicle for dispensing local information.

Web 2.0 has saved real estate brokers and agents fortunes by converting and replacing 1.0 technologies, practices and sensibilities.

Web 2.0 has given some agents and small firms search engine mojo that lets them compete with bigger players by leveraging their knowledge, ingenuity and creativity rather than their wallet.

It's been only three years since real estate has put its toe in the Web 2.0 water. It's way to early to call it over. Or label it as a failure. Or give up on it.

But what does tug at the Web 2.0 failure lever in our space is the “my agents would not like this” or the "you can't do this in real estate" responses heard in conference rooms from Seattle to Sarasota. Agent feedback. User comments on homes. Letting sellers comment on listing blogs - ideas to engage the consumer.

Ideas that are smothered in their crib too often.

And too often, good ideas get slapped onto old ones, failed ones, resulting in chopped up and confusing offerings that are neither here or there.

Free and on your own terms

There are currently 19,000 real estate groups on Yahoo! alone. Tens of millions of people visit real estate sites every month. I submit that given the recent market devastation and all the concerns that plague consumers today, the merits of Web 2.0 and its revenue potential is literally standing at real estate's welcome mat.

It's ringing. Knocking. Throwing pebbles at its window.

But, for the most part, aside from a few isolated cases, real estate still isn't answering.

- Davison

Some gems amid a rough week

Davison and I were in Orange County Monday, San Francisco Tuesday and head to Dallas later this morning. I've been hit with food poisoning and Marc is still without ID or credit cards since losing his wallet in Chicago last week, which makes air travel loads of fun.

So I hope you'll forgive the light posting!

Anyway ... there were two things that hit my inbox over the past few days that are worth noting.

#1

Technology consultant John Rowles pinged me to tout his IDX solution, which pairs Google's search appliance with a standard listings feed. His intention - which I wholeheartedly support -- is to simplify IDX by delivering a solution that looks and feels like a Google search. You can see it in action here. This from his email:

• We are currently seeing a 35% visitor repeat rate and an average time on site of 12 minutes (bounce filtered -- we filter out 1 page view visits and visits <30 seconds. That is SOP in eCommerce).

• Google the address of one of our listings and, if the agent has held up their end and provided content, we are usually #1, Page 1.
  
  
• Google a more general term, and we are creeping up Page 1. Like, "stamford ct mls" #1, "new haven ct real estate" #2 , and "newport ri real estate" #5, etc.
  
  
• In addition to the usual analytics, we can also track the keywords people use internally on our site, which is a treasure trove of actionable intel if you are a metrics wonk like me.

Is there something here? Perhaps. I need to think about it more with a clearer head. I am interested in your thoughts.

#2

Vladimir Bosanac, Publisher of The Registry, a SF Bay Area real estate publication, shot me a link to Wheelhouse, an investment real estate brokerage that's doing some pretty cool stuff, including candid reviews of every building on the market in their area.


 
I know: Redfin did this on the residential side and got smacked down by the MLS in its top market. So proceed with caution.

But the larger takeaway here is that this company, which claims that it is "Trustworthy" in bold type on its homepage, actually does something to substantiate that claim.

You don't see that much in residential real estate real estate brokerage. Yet.

-- Brian Boero