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real estate industry: Why lead aggregation is a dead business model in real estate - 12/12/06 02:27 AM
One of my first posts on ActiveRain was title, The downfall of the "Lead Generators" and I wanted to revisit the topic. Over the last several months I've heard lots of people question whether companies like Zillow, Trulia, Move and Google will switch to a lead generation model as opposed to advertising once they "corner the online market". The simple answer is, they won't. The people managing these companies are smart enough to realize the model is not viable or sustainable.
And you say, but, but... HouseValues, HomeGain, etc. made a ton of money doing this. Actually they did back when there was little competition for … (45 comments)
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real estate industry: The fear of Trulia - 11/15/06 12:04 AM
Ok, so now that I'm back from the NAR conference I can actually find some time to blog. I was pondering the following question on my flight down and thought that it would make a good post/question.
The real estate industry typically approaches new "real estate technology" companies with a lot of apprehension and often fear. Now I can't really blame them, the last five to ten years have produced a huge number of companies that have expoited exploited the real estate industry for a profit or have set out along the goal of disintermediating the industry. I believe agents are very correct … (32 comments)
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real estate industry: Comments on real estate listings - Followup - 08/19/06 06:24 PM
A little over a week ago I wrote a post on how Zip Realty was now taking a semi Web 2.0'ish approach of allowing consumers to rate and provide comments on their real estate listings. My basic thought was that it simply wasn't going to work, for a couple reasons. A house unlike other products and services rateable on other sites doesn't stay on the market very long. Typically someone provides a review of a product/service after they have already bought/used it. In the context of a listing, if it's been bought it's no longer on the market making comments and rankings essentially worthless. It also opens a whole pandora's … (7 comments)
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real estate industry: Hats off to Ardell of Rain City Guide - 08/19/06 06:01 PM
I just wanted to congratulate Ardell DellaLoggia one the bloggers over the Rain City Guide for being selected as one of the Top 10 Women Real Estate Bloggers. I really enjoy her blogging style, she calls the issues like she see's them, no beating around the bush. Whether you agree with her or not her blogs create for great reading material about the real estate industry. If you haven't heard of her before I suggest you check out both the RainCityGuide.com and her other blog at http://www.searchingseattleblog.com/.
I'll have to try reading a few of the other bloggers on the top 10 list when I … (3 comments)
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real estate industry: Carnival of Real Estate #5 - 08/14/06 11:52 AM
Just a heads up, the August 14th addition of the carnival of real estate is being hosted over at Brownstoner. For those of you that haven't heard about it, it's a way to highlight the best real estate related blog posts each week. Each week its hosted by a different real estate blogger and travels throughout the blogoshere, hence "carnival" being in the name. The carnival of real estate just started up about a month ago but I think it's a pretty cool idea so I hope it continues to gain steam.
ActiveRain got mentioned in two places in this weeks carnival, … (5 comments)
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real estate industry: Inman: Real estate technology takes off - 08/08/06 01:58 PM
Inman news just put out their first article of a three part series on "what industry insiders and participants expect will drive change and technology development in the next few years". The first article titled "Carpe diem: Real estate tech takes off", seemed to narrow the focus onto how these insiders see technology innovation being driven by consumers wanting and expecting access to greater amounts of information online. Where they find this information will affect who they work with when buying or selling a house.
A couple of quotes I found particularly interesting, and my comments:
Marty Frame, CIO Fidelity National Title: "There will be an evolution … (9 comments)
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real estate industry: Consumer feedback on listings at Zip Realty - 08/06/06 12:22 PM
Jessica Swesey over at the Inman blog writes, about how Zip Realty has announced a new customer home review feature as part of their listings search. The concept basically allows consumers to provide comments and ratings on the home listings provided through their site. You can rate homes on a variety of attributes such as curb appeal, neighborhood quality, and exterior appearance, as well as leave free form comments. Zip Realty requires a pre-registration to search for homes, and on principle I wasn't going to provide my personal information, to go check it out.
This is very similar to the idea of user … (11 comments)
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real estate industry: Real estate looks more transparent in crystal ball - 07/31/06 04:40 PM
I was going to write up a good summary of what was being said at Inman Real Estate Connect about how consumers will find listing data in the future. But Inman News put up a good summary today titled "Real estate looks more transparent in crystal ball"
I tend to agree with the speakers that for good or bad, listing data will become much more open in the future. I just disagree with them on the timing, there is still a hard battle to be fought and we are several years from a resolution. Some brokers seem to realize the writting … (1 comments)
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real estate industry: Lead conversion and changing lead definitions - 07/30/06 02:09 PM
One of the ongoing themes at the Inman Real Estate Connect conference was how to turn and Internet generated lead into closed deals. While in the past there had been a huge emphasis on simply generating more leads, it is now on how to turn a lead into a closed deal. I heard several people say, "My company is generating hundreds of leads per week, but we don't know what to do with them." There are two approaches you can take to this problem.
Improved lead generation:
There has been way too much emphasis on the quantity of leads generated as opposed to quality. This was … (22 comments)
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real estate industry: Deal sweetening and upward commission pressures - 07/29/06 07:37 PM
While I was sitting in a coffee shop yesterday in San Francisco I read an article in the USA Today titled "Home sellers sweeten deals" Probably everyone has heard of the rapid rise in builders offering more incentives as regional markets slow. The article states than 75% of builders now offer incentives, up 50% from last year. In addition to incentives some of these builders also offering increased commissions to agents, in an attempt to help move inventory (4%, 5%, or even higher) That in itself wasn't what was so interesting to me, but rather this quote...
"We tell our clients they have … (2 comments)
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real estate industry: Back from Inman Real Estate Connect - 07/29/06 07:09 PM
I just returned from the Inman Real Estate Connect conference in San Francisco. I had been planning to blog about the conference while it was still ongoing, but due to uh, business obligations I found I wasn't making it back to my hotel room until two or three in the morning and in no condition to blog :)
I first want to thank Brad Inman (pictured left) for putting on a great and informative event. It was my first Inman Connect and it certainly won't be my last. There were many very good speakers and panels representing a variety of view points both … (8 comments)
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real estate industry: Road trip to Inman and empowering the real estate professional - 07/26/06 10:13 AM
On Monday, Caleb and me set out on a roadtrip to the Inman Real Estate Connect in San Francisco. Why did we not fly? Basically the concept was that we had been talking about a roadtrip for a while (outside of work), it never happened, so we'd instead take one to the conference. While I feel I have lots of great ideas, we decided about halfway into the 12 hour drive from Seattle to San Francisco, that driving probably wasn't one of them.
Being on the road for that amount of time did give us a lot of opportunity to brainstorm ideas for the ActiveRain Real Estate Network. … (3 comments)
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real estate industry: Inman Real Estate Connect - San Francisco - 07/13/06 01:10 PM
A little later this month we (Caleb and myself) will be attending the Inman Real Estate Connect conference in San Francisco. Unlike the big NAR get togethers, which mainly target realtors, the Inman Real Estate Connect conferences tend to be about the movers and shakers in the real estate industry. It "will draw upwards of 2000 executives, decision makers, opinion leaders, top brokers, mega-agents, trendsetters, press, analysts and investors".
I was curious if any members of the ActiveRain Real Estate Network are planning on attending? Let us know if you are, because it would be great to be able to get together while we're down there and … (5 comments)
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real estate industry: Innovators and Aggregators - 07/04/06 02:00 PM
I was just looking over the finalists for the 2006 Inman News - Innovator Awards. One thing that struck me how many of the companies are "Listings Aggregators". Listing aggregators are companies that pull together real estate listings on a national level and present them to consumers. Three that I see prominently mentioned are Trulia, PropSmart and Google Base. There are many others, some very well known that aren't on the list such as Craigslist, Point2, realtor.com, etc.
These sites use a several different methods to get their listings. Some directly from agents/brokers, others from scraping sites, and some via MLS's (something that is borderline impossible on … (3 comments)
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real estate industry: The downfall of the "Lead Generators" - 06/30/06 08:14 PM
The other night I was reading a post on Joel Burslem's real estate marketing blog which I replied to but also felt like would make a good topic for this blog. Basically he was questioning the advertising revenue model that Zillow has adopted and wondering if it made more sense for them to position themselves as a lead generator such as House.com rather than a "Media Site". He felt that Zillow was essentially biting the hand that feeds it, by depending "entirely on advertising monies from Realtors to sustain its business model, and yet clearly is in the business of providing the tools for … (6 comments)
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Matt Heaton
Bothell,
WA
More about me…
Timu Corp - CEO, ActiveRain - Co-founder
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My ramblings about growing ActiveRain, the real estate industry and something I follow very closely, credit markets. Why "The ActiveRain Addiction"?
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