So Realestate.com has decided to revamp their site to be more customer friendly according to a press release issued today. "The new RealEstate.com beta design gives customers what they've told us they want, which is free access to home listings without having to register their contact information," said Kimberly Gorsuch-Bradbury, senior vice president and general manager of RealEstate.com.
Because Realestate.com is owned by marketing lead generation giant Lending Tree, LLC one has to wonder why they would want to provide information without trading the information for customer contact data. The answer may be found in Ms. Gorush-Bradbury's further comments, "The trick isn't finding listings; it's finding the right ones. Our innovation comes in the tools we are developing to get people closer to the listings they really want."
That sounds pretty good. I admit that using MLS driven sites like Realtor.com can sometimes return a deluge of listing and searchability is sometime time-intensive. So I visited the beta site which they are testing here in the Dallas, TX market. The main page allowed me to begin my search with a city/state or zip code and then filter by price range, bedroom count, bathroom count. I could then rule out raw land, condos, or multi-unit homes. Realtor.com allows the same initial seach selections and then provides for the same additonal filters. I decided to do a test:
I input the city of Murphy, TX price range of $150,000 to $400,000 and 4 bedrooms. I left the bathroom count blank or "any". I then filtered just for single family residences.
Realtor.com: 159 listings matched my search criteria
Realestate.com BETA: 83 listing matched my search criteria
One cool feature I did like about Realestate.com BETA is that the return screen for my search gave me a nice header where I could pick within certain price ranges, square footage, etc. It's also interesting to me that Realtor.com lists the lowest price first and realestate.com lists the highest price first. So I changed the realestate.com BETA to filter at the $150,000 range and I learned something interesting. The extra listings that Realtor.com returned were for properties in Plano not Murphy. The two suburbs of Dallas do border each other and I did NOT search by zip code...I searched by city. So why did Realtor.com give me listings in Plano?
Clicking for more information about the first listing the two sites had in common produced some interesting differences. Realtor.com very prominently featured/promoted the listing agent. It was very clear who the agent was, her picture, how to contact her, etc. Realestate.com BETA instead featured a really close-up map (powered by Ask.com) that made it very easy to see the property location. If I'm shopping on-line and want to print out the property details, I'd really like to have the map on the same page. The realtor's photo is nice, but only if I'm ready to call and see the home.
Another piece of detail I liked on Realestate.com BETA was the calculation of price per square foot. I think that's a really vital piece of information when comparison shopping and I liked that the site did the math for me.
Now here's the part the Realtors aren't going to like about Realestate.com BETA, it makes it very challenging to contact the listing agent. There IS a BIG link to "Request an IMMEDIATE call" and an 800#. Both of these direct business to a real estate company who has paid for the lead, not necessarily the listing agent. On the property I searched the listing agent was with ReMax and the lead went to Century 21. I could not find contact information on Realestate.com BETA for the ReMax agent who is listing the home, only her name and the name of her office.
So in summary, as a shopper I like Realestate.com BETA much better than I like Realtor.com. I think it potentially offers more useful information, maps, and more exact searching in some areas. Try it for yourself...
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