Comments on: Real estate search wars

By: Dirk Knudsen

Dirk Knudsen — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 20:40:00 +0000

Great piece of work!

I own a brokerage firm myself.

We feel map based searches will be essential to getting customers to stay at our site. The other tools we offer than become ultimately important in gettig them to transact. BUt do we need it?? Yes.

It is very difficult to get good search tools and mapping perfected especially if you are a smaller brokerage firm!

Anywya this was very well written!

Thanks;

Dirk

By: Real estate search wars - Real Estate Trend Diary - Get the latest update on Real Estate Market from top bloggers online!

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 06:08:40 +0000

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By: Kevin Boer

Kevin Boer — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 03:50:47 +0000

Marlow, re post #5:

That seems like a pretty ridiculous rule to me. After all, it’s not like your Realbird feed is causing any more burden to your MLS’s IDX feed! I would assume Realbird has one feed from your MLS, and they distribute that feed to their clients.

By: Links for a very busy Saturday . . . | BloodhoundBlog | The weblog of BloodhoundRealty.com in Phoenix, Arizona

Sat, 11 Nov 2006 15:16:59 +0000

[...] Marlow Harris at 360Digest is trading maps for money in a very astute analysis. How hi is Seattle’s tech?: I don’t know of a single map interface at a Phoenix brokerage. [...]

By: Marlow Harris

Marlow Harris — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 07:26:23 +0000

Really? Come to think of it, that really DOESN’T make a lot of sense, does it? I can’t check all of the Puget Sound Business Journal’s figures, but I can probably do a quick check of just Excel’s sales for 2005 and find out if that’s correct. Since we have a long weekend, I’ll try to find some time to do that. Thanks for the heads up. And good luck with the new site. It really does look great!

By: Gordon Stephenson

Gordon Stephenson — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 06:38:19 +0000

Marlow – interesting stuff. One clarification: The sales figure from the Book of Lists for our company — Real Property Associates — is accurate, and the numbers for the other companies you listed trended similarly from prior years. But for Excel, I’m nearly certain the figure that PSBJ published was wrong by a decimal point: $70.2m (not $702m) would have been far more likely given Excel’s size and prior years’ sales.

By: Marlow Harris

Marlow Harris — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 19:45:18 +0000

I also put the Realbird interactive map on my main website SeattleDreamHomes using their free 30-day intro. It was super-fab, and only $159 a year for a Google-based interactive mapping tool, branded with my name and contact information.

Unfortunately, our local MLS only allows two feeds from IDX service providers, per company. Since my broker, CBBA, already has contracted with two service providers, Logical Dog and Real Tech, I cannot use the Realbird map. Me sad

By: Kevin Boer

Kevin Boer — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 19:16:28 +0000

An interesting phenomenon in Web 2.0 businesses is that the first generation to try something spends a ton of money, and the next generation gets the same thing for a lot less. Redfin spent a ton of money on its cool site, as presumably did John L Scott, Windermere, and some of the others you quote.

I now have a pretty cool interactive MLS search feature on my site, too, and my cost is $19.95 per month, thanks to Realbird.

This may be a case in which there really isn’t a first-mover advantage!

By: Marlow Harris

Marlow Harris — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 19:10:31 +0000

So far, the companies who spend the most on internet advertising, sponsored searches and PPC appear to be making the least in closed sales, at least in our market here. It still appears to be a people-to-people biz. Russell Shaw
had a great article on Zip, which pretty much describes their profits (Zip): http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=625

By: Doug Quance

Doug Quance — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 16:52:49 +0000

Thanks for the info, Marlow.

Perhaps the production figures do not quantify the number of part-time agents those firms have. Although that, in itself, would not explain all the differences – it may explain some of them.

As for mapping, we have had the ability to use mapping search functions for several months, but have not yet decided to do so. Our MLS has had the feature for many years, but I seldom use it… and when I do, it’s for searches in the high-density areas of town.

We’ve backed off of the PPC ads for a while, as between the cost-per-click for the most popular terms was getting outrageous – and the click fraud was getting obvious.