Dwellicious launches new beta of social bookmarking for real estate site.
Over at AgentGenius, Benn Rosales, recently wrote a post about Dwellicious. I was interested in the concept of Dwellicious so I sent an email request for a beta-testing login. I doubted I would get one, as Benn stated they had 10 to give out, and I had read the article a little late. To my surprise, Dan Woolley sent me an email with info on how to login. I love trying out new things, so I was pretty excited at the concept of being "one of the first."
This morning, I fired it up and gave it a test drive. It wasn't a super-involved test drive, I was just checking out the basics first. I'll do more of the fun kind of test driving later (you know the one, where you try to break everything by clicking on as many links and buttons as you possibly can and doing things that you probably would never do).
The concept is simple, the execution is excellent.
The idea is to allow the consumer to go through the various real estate sites (they currently have a list of which ones it works on, most of the major real estate sites are represented) and tag (or bookmark) properties. Its 3AM and you're looking at one awesome house on Realtor.com and then see another one you love on Trulia.com. By tagging both of them, when you wake up at 11AM (you were up all night looking at houses, you deserve to sleep in), you simply go to Dwellicious and both properties are in one place. Simple right? So what's the use? You could have just bookmarked the two sites and have been done with it.
This is where things get good.
When you bookmark a property, you can add notes and tags. Imagine being able to search through all your properties with tags (much like we do with blogging). Say you've looked (and bookmarked) 100 properties (you're still in the early phase of research). You can't remember which ones had pools. Since you were smart enough to add "pool" tags to all the ones with pools, you can now sort through them fast and efficiently. Add tags for neighborhoods or communities. Add them for schools. Add them for features of the home you like (think "granite countertop", "large master", "huge backyard"). Suddenly all those millions of houses you've been seeing late at night on the internet become related to one another in ways that make sense to you. You're in the driver's seat and you control how the properties can be sorted and qualified. Long before you see a single one of them, you've got the knowledge of what you like and don't like about them - and with all those notes and tags, imagine how you could then turn around to an agent and say, check out my Dwellicious site, this will give you a good idea of what exactly I am looking for. When the property updates (price change, new photos, etc.) it updates within Dwellicious as well, so its always right there in front of you.
Sounds good, but I want more.
Ok. You've got it. I recently wrote a short essay for a contest over at Inman about the future of real estate and I commented that I thought that although all the information on the internet was great as far as real estate is concerned, the biggest problem it faces is that the information is all over the place. Some people love the hunt for information on the internet, googling things over and over to try and find the right sites that fit their needs. A lot of people like their information a little more easy to find. Dwellicious is here to help you with that too. When you pull up a property you have bookmarked, Dwellicious presents a range of tabs for you to get more information that you might normally have to dig a little further for. Want to know the Walk Score of the property? Just click the tab. Need maps and Google Street View? Just click the tab. Neighborhood information? School data? Zillow valuations? Panoramio photos of local sites? You know what to do...just click the tab. When information is easier to acquire, the users experience is much more relaxed and enjoyable. Home buying is stressful enough and with all this information at your fingertips, you can make informed decisions and be ready when its time to finally "hit the streets" and see some houses.
I look forward to seeing how this grows and where it leads. I think its off to a great start. I'm off to play with it some more and see what I can find.
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