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

A home search wish for 2009: Let's get visual!

To properly merchandise a listing, one should:

A. Park a 1983 Oldsmobile Cutlass on the front lawn

B. Arrange a "Beeramid" on the kitchen table

C. Post blurry, poorly composed photos of the property on the web

For sooooo long, otherwise intelligent agents have failed to understand the necessity of properly merchandising a listing online. They'll obsess on curb appeal, but drop the ball on screen appeal.

But I am seeing signs of hope. Most luxury brokers have set standards for the number, size and quality of listing photos for a long time, but now I'm seeing this more and more in mid-market organizations. My informal sampling of listing sites the past few months reveals a noticeable improvement.

I think the down market is forcing brokers and agents to sharpen their game. And listings sites are moving in response. Yahoo! Real Estate announced a redesign with larger images a couple weeks ago. Realtor.com and the new HomesDatabase.com from MRIS offer "gallery" search results views that take users well beyond the traditional thumbnail.

But more interesting are the possibilities for fully "visualizing" home search. Trulia dabbled here last year with its release of Trulia Snapshot, but this felt more like an experiment than a full-fledged attempt to alter the search paradigm.

The best example of visual search right now is searchme, a site I've written about before. I believe we'll see this applied to home search in 2009 - perhaps as a "featured listings" component on one of the major listings sites.

Even more interesting is Cooliris, a browser plugin that allows you to search images on hundreds of sites, including Google, in something approximating 3-D. It's stunning and, unlike so many new web apps, actually works as promised. Download it and you'll see the possibilities for real estate.

I'd like to see Cooliris index some real estate sites. But what I'd really like is for one of the players in our category to take a flyer on something like this -- to overlay listings specs on photos the user can scan. In this way, all the most important stuff -- location, price and a visual of the home -- are easily digested at a glance.

It would be consumer a facing differentiator and could offer a unique up-sell opportunity for ad-based sites. It would also raise the bar for those just beginning to understand that crappy listing photos just don't cut it.

Do you see the value here?

-- Brian Boero

What real estate can learn from a shoe peddler

Zappos is the leading online shoe site. They are a customer service-driven organization that has received a ton of business from my household the past couple years. But what concerns me here is the online experience, which is simply fantastic.

What makes Zappos great

It's simple in my mind. I'll use real estate language to explain it:

1. The "MLS" -- Zappos -- easily mingles inventory from a vast array of shoe "brokers" across borders through a brilliantly executed public search site.
2. The brokers who supply the inventory also supply awesome pictures and great content to merchandise their products.
3. Consumers are allowed to participate and contribute reviews solicited by the "MLS" on behalf of the "brokers."

Zappos' greatness is a result of this trinity of contributors working harmoniously, each vested in a common end result - a successful transaction.   

Here, everyone wins.
Hard work in and great results out.
This is what it's about.

What makes real estate search not so great

It's simple in my mind:

1. The MLS (most, anyway) won't mingle inventory from the vast array of brokerages across borders resulting in a less than useful search experience.
2. The brokers don't, can't and won't supply awesome pictures and great content needed to properly merchandise their products.
3. Consumers are never solicited for reviews by the MLS on behalf of the brokers because they fear this content.

Here, there's no winner.
Laziness in. Nothing great out.
This is what it's about. 

Online real estate will never fulfill its promise if real estate's three participants don't all step up to the plate.

Real estate talks a great game. But comes up short when it counts.

It's nice how everyone throws around the word "consumer," but meanwhile it's almost 2009 and people still can't search across MLS borders on most broker websites. Instead, they need to go outside real estate to do it. And while they might be able to look at homes on those sites, they can't source the critical knowledge about homes and neighborhoods because it's locked away inside the MLS, the brokerage and the minds of local residents. If real estate really cared about the consumer, this problem would be history.

It's cool that a few MLS's in the Bay area poured some celebratory bubbly over a decision to merge data. But the cheers are ten years too late. And the time just keeps tick-tocking away.

Zappos does it right.
It matters not that they sell shoes. 
That's not the big picture.

- 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