More Web2.0 Competition: MLS-2.com
Posted by Pat Kitano at 11/28/2006 11:14 PM 
Categories: Technology, Realty Realities, San Francisco Bay Area, Cool Web Tools
Categories: Technology, Realty Realities, San Francisco Bay Area, Cool Web Tools
Two weeks ago, I discussed how difficult it is to maintain the first mover advantage in the Web 2.0 real estate world. It takes years to change the way the participants in the real estate industry work... anecdotal proof - there are still Realtors who don't use email. A Web 2.0 application like Trulia or Movoto launches, but during the time it takes to gain business traction, its "secret sauce" can be replicated by the local established competitors.
Here is a simple Alexa reach chart to show how Bay Area local web 2.0 site Movoto is faring . Too bad I can't find local Bay Area stats on how the national sites Trulia, Zip, Redfin and their brethren are doing for comparison purposes... (anyone know local web data sources?)
I compared Movoto with the IDX sites of two local Bay Area shops - APR.com (Alain Pinel), InteroRealEstate.com (Intero). Movoto's gaining a little traction over the month of November, but the reach is still small. In comparison, look at 3OceansRealEstate (red line), a well received blog with a simple Google map listing search c/o Realbird. After only two months in existence, it has comparable reach with the IDX sites (but not page rank - listing search sites by definition pulls up a lot of pages... makes you wonder why the IDX's don't have blogs or just daily posts on their websites...)
The point: the Web2.0 listing search game is far from saturation (yes, I know I didn't count national sites like Zip or Trulia, but even with their inclusion you can still count the # of Bay Area Web2.0 sites on your fingers). There's a maxim Realtors have used to ameliorate the inherent competitiveness among agents - "there's always room enough for everybody in this business". These days, the maxim has outlived its veneer of civility with the recent influx of new agents, but it still applies to Web2.0 Real Estate.
The newest Bay Area Web2.0 - MLS-2.com beta debuts this week with a unique feature catering to the times we're in - users can search listings for price drops. Graphically, MLS-2 has more work to do... Patrick Boyle, CEO says more unique features to differentiate its offering are planned. Stay tuned...
Technorati tags MLS-2 MLS real estate real estate search mashups web2.0 real estate technology real estate marketing movoto trulia idx realbird
I think you're right Pat. We're still far from seeing a full shakeout in the online real estate game. I also wouldn't count out the big brokers making significant investments in their web sites to catch up. But just as likely to succeed, are the small stealth startup who might just hit on the magic combination of features, stickiness and design and leapfrog over everybody.
That's what makes it so exciting to watch!
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It is interesting to watch these sites and to see how well they do. My main concern with all of them is data integrity and data reliability. I suppose for the people that create the sites and the ideas behind them it is about the technology. Real estate companies in general are so far behind the times that it is unlikely that they will catch up anytime soon. The next logical step would be to get the good data from those who have it but can not turn it into something useful for the consumer into the hands of the folks that know how to make web sites like Zillow. As for the sites that reach success in 2 months, I would be much more interested to see how they are doing a year from now.
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I have to agree - we don't even know who will present for the shakeout. Any idea how Movoto is doing for sales? That seems pretty important to their success...
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Thank you for your comments... I guess the overriding theme of your insights is "time will tell". I predict more of these listing search sites will add blogs and daily content for SEO purposes... blog's beneficial SEO properties are well documented, most recently by Athol. Steve at Ubertor also notes Redfin is trying to hire bloggers.
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Seems most of the innovation is on the west coast, most new searches are very limited, but progress is being made, The real estate vendors are too busy trying to sell us stuff, then investing in the future, others will excel at this, it is quite obvious, our MLS has a very cool tool for our clients, it is their own website for searches, price reductions, increases, status changes, comments, my comments, auto email, photos, tours, files, etc. all in one place, a bit to set up but my clients love it. I learn a lot about their preferences this way.
Look forward to hearing more on this.
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Terry, I'm betting you have more knowledge about technology just from blogging and understanding the innovations popping from Silicon Valley than those real estte vendors you refer to...
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One thing I've noticed is that all of the existing and new sites coming out rely solely on data from the MLS. Why not get the information straight from the source, the owners/sellers and bypass the MLS altogether?
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Danilo, sites without MLS listings have the trouble of having no listings - would you list your house on a site with no listings? Would you search for a house on a site that was missing most or even some of the listings on the market? I wouldn't. It's an uphill battle for MLS-free sites to get enough listings to get people to list on your site or to get enough searchers to compel sellers to list.
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Now Zillow will try this path of "open source listings"... Realty Thoughts blog discusses the Inman News report that Houston MLS will put their real estate listings on Google Base... the implications of Google working with the MLS systems are profound due to Google's reach into local audiences.
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