Happy New Year!
I’m downright excited about 2008!
And one final link for the year: check out Jon Washburn’s predictions for 2008. It’s a great read!
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Dustin
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Dustin
If you think realtor.com dominates real estate search today, then…
…I would concur that realtor.com might dominate real estate search in 2008. But dominate is WAY too strong of a word because no one dominates real estate search today.
To dominate a market, I’d think you’d have to have something approaching at least 50% market share… Let’s use eBay as an example (the numbers are a bit dated, but make a valid point)… Of the 68.4M unique users that visited auction sites in Feb ‘06, 66.6M of those users visited eBay. That means eBay capture over 97% of the market! That’s dominance!
With under 10% of online real estate traffic, there is considerable upside for realtor.com in it’s quest to dominate the market.
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Jessie B
I think the bigger question is why isn’t the one of oldest, highest inventory listing sites with a premium domain not dominating?
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Nick Bastian
Maybe they would dominate the market better by getting Realtors to want to work with them. They are a pain with the constant changing of pricing, less than knowledgeable sale people and horrible roi..
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Jack A
Has anyone ever gotten any business directly from Realtor.com? I have never and I have had 2 featured homes spots and the regular package to have my name and contact info on my listings.
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Spencer
Dustin,
Just curious — where did you get the 10% of online real estate traffic number from? The numbers that I’ve seen recently from Hitwise show 4.71% of the category’s traffic going to R.com in Nov07 (vs 9.83% in Nov06). But that’s just r.com, not the whole Move Network.
As I’ve written before, we find all of these third party traffic statistic providers to be pretty unreliable. Hitwise, Compete, Comscore, Alexa — they all botch our traffic pretty badly. When we talk about traffic publicly, we’re citing our own internal numbers which come from Omniture.
Anyway, where is the 10% from? -
Dustin
Spencer, if you follow the link where I mention the “under 10%” of online real estate traffic, you’ll see that I’m simply referencing a hitwise report from Feb ‘07. It’s quite possible that the numbers are even lower now, but I’d be surprised if R.com’s share of the category dropped by over half.
And I definitely concur with you that Hitwise, Compete, Comscore, etc. are all over the board and NEVER agree with internal numbers. Hell, even internal numbers (i.e. server log parsing vs java-script tracking) never agree, but that is another story.
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Jessie B
@Nick – This maybe a dumb question but why do you feel it’s important for the agents to work with REALTOR.com? If the site is consumer facing… isn’t the traffic from the users (home buyers / sellers) more important. In other words why do you think R is not getting more consumer traction since they are interacting with it or do you think because agents are not satisfied with REALTOR.com they bad mouth it to consumers and recommend other sites?
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Dale
How come you didn’t have Remax.com lsited? Realtor.com is on the way out. Too expensive. Too many sites like Remax.com that duplicate the process and don’t charge, actually is free for it’s agents.
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Dustin
Dale:
I’m definitely don’t think realtor.com should be a model for successful real estate listing sites, but remax.com offers an even worse user experience! Ignoring the fact that I can’t even search on the site right now (type in the zip code “98117″ in the zip code area, hit the “search properties” button and nothing happens! by the way if you use a different zip code like 91302 then it works as expected), the interface is so kludge and looks like it was last updated in the 1990s.
Anyway, you’re point about upgrades on Realtor.com being too expensive is a valid concern, but the reality is that for the price of FREE, the typical agent gets the same exposure on realtor.com as you do on Remax.com (i.e. none!).
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Michael
We are the #1 realtor in our area and have been for several years. We have had featured homes, featured communities, showcase properties, and banner ads with realtor.com for years now. The banner ads and featured communities did not work for us, but featured homes & showcase properties have worked extremely well. I don’t know if region has any effect on the model. We are in the South and at least 50% of buyers we work with have searched realtor.com, much more than any other listings site. Our presence there is a major contributor to obtaining buyers as well as in obtaining listings. I agree they have been difficult to work with in the past – raising prices, no quantity discounts, changing sales contacts regularly, etc. But even though it’s expensive, realtor.com is a much better revenue generator for us than local newspaper, real estate listing magazines, pay per click etc. In our area, it is the one site folks know they can go to and get all the listings in the local MLS which is 95% of all homes for sale in our area.
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Scott Rogers
I’d love to know how the traffic at some of the largest sites (Realtor.com, for example), compares with the sum traffic to all broker and agent web sites. If anyone knows where I can find this information, please let me know!
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Dustin
Scott: I agree that would be fascinating information, but I’m not aware of any good source for this information.
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Acomplia
Lovely post. Please add my email address to your list and email me the updates if possible. I always like to read your blog and comment on it.
Dustin
There’s some seriously funny stuff going on…
…in the bathroom.
However, for this next year, I’m committed to doing a better job of cleaning up the house when it gets dirty. So if you like a crowded bathroom, you have only a few more hours to get in there before I clear it out!
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Chris
Are you taking the bathroom away or only cleaning it..scrubbing bubbles would work well Chris
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Linda Davis
Crap! This is the end.
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Maureen M.
Air freshener… you need lots of air freshener Dustin. I remember that day being trapped in the bathroom with all those people…whew…
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Dustin
Chris: I definitely plan to leave the bathroom… It just needs some scrubbing!
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ines
Scrubbing!!!! SCRUBBING!!! what do you mean! It looks perfectly clean to me! (btw, love the snow effect….very cute)
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Dustin
I wish I could take full credit for the snow… but it was just one of the benefits of using wordpress.com to host my site.
Dustin
Inman puts on the pressure…
- Errol Samuelson, president, Realtor.com
- Sheila Bair, chairwoman, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp
- Lockhart Steele, founder and publisher Curbed.com
- Sam Zell, Chicago billionaire
- Kerry Killinger, CEO, Washington Mutual Inc.
- Andrew Cuomo, New York attorney general
- Dustin Luther, founder, 4realz.net
- Lawrence Yun, chief economist, National Association of Realtors
- Ben Bernanke, chairman, Federal Reserve
- Kurt Pfotenhauer, CEO, American Land Title Association
Here’s the blurb about me:
“Luther first came on the real estate radar when he founded Rain City Guide, a Seattle-based real estate blog in 2005. He later worked at Move Inc., as the director of consumer innovations and interactive marketing. We’re watching him in 2008 as he leads his next venture at 4realz.net, a real estate technology consulting firm. We’re betting Luther will spread the word on social media marketing and blogging at a time when many real estate practitioners are looking for ways to boost their business and stand out.“
Wow!
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Michael Wurzer
Great kudos, Dustin! I already knew 4realz.net was going to be one of my must reads for 2008.
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Lock
Goodness, I need a drink.
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Michael Price
Dustin, Lock,
Congrats to both of you being noticed.
MP -
loren nason
out of that list the only people to watch are Dustin and Lock
Happy New Year
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toddwcarpenter
Congrats Dustin, But… With part of Curbed’s “new found funding” coming from Brad Inman, the list comes off to me as a bit self serving. I think some disclosure should have been in order.
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Miss Marlow
Maybe Mr. Inman has a few million kicking around for you too, Dustin.
Congratulations!
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ARDELL
Oh My God! That is Awesome. Bernanke and Dustin! How Kewl is THAT!!!
Jim Duncan
Wow, Dustin. Congrats on being noticed in such eminent company.
It’ll be interesting to look back at that article, and this post, in 5 years.
Dustin
Thanks everyone! It’s definitely a bit unnerving to be listed in such interesting company. Exciting stuff, but I hope expectations don’t get set too high for me!
BTW, I think Lock was an obvious choice and I can’t wait to see how he continues to build out curbed.
Jay Thompson
Lock belongs there. (Come to PHOENIX Curbed!)
So does Dustin.
Yun? Yawn. But not surprising.
Greg Tracy
Many of us have been watching you this whole time.
Kudos and best of luck in 2008!
Deborah Burns
Pretty impressive list Dustin, you of course will be the one we’re most excited for and interested in! Congratulations!
Eileen Tefft
This is fun stuff Dustin. You sure keep us on our toes!
Chad Hallberg
Lovin it Dustin! Keep it up and we’ll all be able to say we knew you when…
morgan180
wow – i know you! congrats dustin!
Dustin
Local Tax Assessor gets hammered…
…by real estate professionals in the comments of Danilo’s post where he describes how a Loudoun County official has been playing hard-ball in telling him to take down an assessment of the Assessor’s office.
Interestingly, over the past few years, I’ve had multiple people tell me I had to take things down of Rain City Guide and with the one exception of the listings search (it upset the NWMLS that our IDX home search was on a subdirectory of RCG because RCG was “not an agent’s site”, so I had to move it to http://annaluther.com), I can’t think of anything else I’ve taken down. One of the benefits of not being an “agent site” in the traditional sense is that I haven’t had to get caught up with all the baggage that can go with being a REALTOR.
With that said, I’m hope that Danilo’s broker backs him up. Otherwise he’ll likely be facing a similar decision as Shaun did last month.
(more interesting comments on Bloodhound)
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Danilo Bogdanovic
Dustin,
Thanks for the comment about my situation. I don’t think that I’ll be following in Shaun’s footsteps, but that’s for others to decide so who knows…
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agent21
Danilo is not alone in finding corruption and greed in the property appraisal process. Here’s a taste of another jack booted appraiser, Tylene Gamble, Chief Appraiser of Wharton County, Texas. She sued taxpayers after her own appeals board sided with the citizens. Read all about it at http://maximstench.com/
Tom Johnson
Nick
I’m not a REALTOR, but I wrote a couple of articles on my blog about how our local MLS needs to make some serious upgrades to their agent site. Without even trying, I was outranking the local MLS in searches for their domains within a couple of weeks. They figured out who I worked for and contacted my boss, completely bypassing me and forced a meeting with my boss, their president, their technology VP and myself and I was basically told they appreciate the feedback, just not publicly. But they’d be more than happy to use me as a free technical consultant. They remind me of the recording industry with their strong-arm tactics, it’s rather sad.
Jay Thompson
The comments of Danilo’s blog weren’t the only place the Assessor got hammered.
Just Google Todd Kaufman Assessor and see what comes up…
(And the broker most definitely backed him up!)
Anonymous
Dustin
Does New York need another…
With only five listings in Brooklyn (push out the price range to show all homes), I must say I’m not impressed with FlyRig.
Mashable compares the site to Craigslist, but I’m thinking HotPads is a more obvious competitor (and they have ~37 rental listings within the neighborhood of Bay Ridge within Brooklyn).
Dustin
I think Michael runs one of the best…
…”company blogs” over at FBS Blog. And his latest post on blogging as marketing
shows that he knows how to strike the right balance of staying on topic without sounding like he’s giving a sales pitch. Without his blog, I wouldn’t know the first thing about FlexMLS. But based on Michael’s blogging, I’d consider FlexMLS to be on the forefront of companies that are building MLS backend systems. I consider that to be great branding…
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Jim Duncan
If I were in the position of choosing a new MLS provider, I would be hard-pressed to consider any company other than Michael’s for one simple reason – he “gets it.”
He and his company are constantly innovating, and I trust him to listen and learn from others – something that other companies may be doing, but I wouldn’t know it.
He’s done something that all bloggers should be striving for – he’s earned trust and respect.
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Jay Thompson
How many guys in Michael’s position would be willing to contribute to a blog like this?
He’s a genuine, nice guy too.
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Michael Wurzer
Thanks, Dustin, and Jim and Jay! I’m honored by your comments. Jay, I’m looking forward to the next six months when the Phoenix RE Tech Exchange starts getting some more action as testing and deployment of flexmls Web begin in Phoenix. Then we’ll see if we can earn our stripes.
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Russell Shaw
Ditto. To everything Dustin, Jim and Jay said.
Dustin
When someone guarantees Google placement…
…you can be pretty sure they are trying to sell you a website product and they are hoping to play off of your inexperience.
Let’s take Rain City Guide for example… Mary McKnight gives 8 steps to guarantee first page placement in Google. I’ve done EVERY one of these things (and more) on Rain City Guide and yet front page placement still eludes RCG on the most obvious and critical search term: [seattle real estate]
- Use keywords in link text.
- Check. EVERY page on RCG links back to the main page with the text “Seattle Real Estate” in two paces (header tabs and footer)
- Use keywords in your title tag
- Check.
- Use keywords in your heading tags (H1, H2, and H3)
- Check. Many, many posts have been written with titles (H2) that include the keywords “Seattle”, “real estate”, and even “Seattle real estate”
- Monitor and work to increase your PageRank on both your homepage and internal pages
- Check. I’ve been monitoring and improving PageRank for almost three year
- Be sure that each page contains more than 200 words of relevant, indexable content
- Check.
- Update your real estate blog content at least 3-5 times per week
- Check.
- Actively seek new links to your site from other related websites but do not build backlinks too fast
- Wait until your domain name ages
- Check. RCG is one of the oldest real estate blogs around. If the solution means waiting more than 3 years, then is not really a solution at all.
I honestly have nothing against Mary’s advice… It’s all good stuff. I just don’t believe that you will guarantee yourself first page placement by following it.
jeff, 
Tracy, 
Fej Tebroc and 13 others are discussing. -
Greg Swann
Too much short head. Move to Tacoma. Move to Olympia. Move to Ruby Beach — it’s beautiful, and, on the OP, the long tail is unclaimed.
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SEO-Services
I have seen some clients site where any SEO savvy person can give you a close to certain prediction but in most competitive markets you just have to cover all the internet marketing best practices and monitor to re caliber. Good Job!
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Dustin
That’s an idea… and if I could just get all the contributors to move out to Seabrook, we’d already start way ahead of the game!
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Jessie B
The issue with RCG is the home page term you want “seattle real estate” is too diluted with all posts as you currently have it structured.
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Dustin
And Jessie, I happen to know that it is an EXTREMELY competitive keyword with some agents spending tens of thousands of dollars a year to rank in that term (which will buy a lot of linkbacks!)…
Also, all my SEO work has not been in vain. RCG does really well on some terms that are less competitive (like [agent recommendations] and [moving to seattle]…
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Jonathan Washburn
There Dustin goes stirring up the mud again. Online like a true uberblogger can.
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Jonathan Washburn
There Dustin goes stirring up the mud again. Only like a true uberblogger can.
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Jessie B
I’m sure it is but in the competitive terms like this, there is not a single item that will work, it is the combination of all the little things together that add up.
The more competition, the more that every little thing needs to be correct. Also the links are only part of the total equation. I think your 107,000 links is more than enough..
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Drew M from Zillow
I don’t think anyone can guarantee anything in Google.
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Dustin
Jon: I probably shouldn’t enjoy myself as much as I do… but… what the hell!
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toddwcarpenter
Meanwhile, my Denver Modern Homes blog received First place page results for all sorts of keyword terms without doing ANY of that.
Also, Dustin, is Seattle Real Estate really such an important term? Is this how consumers think? I guessed that consumers would use a term like house or homes instead of real estate. Purely a guess though.
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Dustin
Drew: I think I’ve even heard Matt Cutts say he can’t guarantee anything in Google!
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Dustin
Todd: You bring up a good point that there are probably more people searching for [Seattle home listings] or some such term, but RCG doesn’t do a good job answering that query.. I like to think we do a pretty good job giving information about [seattle real estate] though.
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ines
Google placement, isn’t that the question of the century. Keywords are tricky and some are extremely competitive. In the 7 months I’ve had Miamism I have succeeded with my main keyword and have been creeping up with 2 others because they are similar to “seattle real estate” (miami real estate and miami beach real estate)….I would talk to Mary….she has talked to a couple of people with similar issues and with just a bit of tweaking, they have made incredible progress in a short time.
She’s good Dustin and doesn’t need to sell the product because it sells itself (here I am selling it for her)
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Dustin
ines: I hear everything you’re saying… and you’re probably right that she doesn’t need anyone to see her product for her…
Probably doesn’t need anyone to defend herself either. She’s a smart woman and my guess is that she deliberately used the word “guarantee” in the title because she hoped it would cause a bit of controversy, which I was more than happy to provide!
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ARDELL
If this means I have to say “Seattle Real Estate” eight times in every one of my RCG posts…well, fukgeddaboutit!
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Dustin
LOL! New RCG rules: Every post must have the words seattle real estate in the title!
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laudu
Well, this gives me some comfort…I’ve decided that being “found” is probably not as important as being “lost.” One could LOOSE countless hours of time and sleep trying to unravel the mysterious science of “google placement.” Here’s to better results…hopefully…but not guaranteed.
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Teresa Boardman
My blog has first page placement and is number one on the first page. It has been there for almost a year. I don’t do 2, 3 or 5. My placement was not an accident, I did work for it. it took 14 months to get to the number one spot and about six months to get on the first page. There are no guarantees. I come up number one on some lessor known keywords too and those are the words that bring me the kind of business I want.
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ARDELL
“I come up number one on some lessor known keywords too and those are the words that bring me the kind of business I want.”
That sentence bears repeating. For me, it’s all about MSN and not Google. I have to work extra hard at that, and haven’t lately. But that’s what pays off for me.
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Real Estate SEO
Dustin- nice new venture here.
On Mary’s post. I do not believe she even offers SEO. She just writes posts on the subject, and I think she probably was employing perhaps too hypie a title, than she was guaranteeing her work.
I agree guaranteeing SEO work is just plain silly and impossible, although you can gurantee it thru risk reversals.
In regards to your site, without spending much time analyzing it, I would say for one to get the footer text to not match the white background as that could be considered spam.
I get that you are #22 in google for your term.
Your footer text says Seattle’s Rain City Real Estate Guide and you are 22. Hmmm.
What if you were to change that footer to say:
Seattle Real Estate Guide in Rain CityI would bet that just moving the proximity of your important terms would get you closer to your goal.
BTW you are #1 for Seattle’s Rain City Real Estate Guide
I havent run my software but my guess is that the jillions of links to your page says the brand: seattle rain city real estate guide, but not seattle real estate, ask your new link partners to use seattle real estate and you will rise inthe serps-i can almost guarantee
Cheers,
Tim O’Keefe -
Jay Thompson
“LOL! New RCG rules: Every post must have the words seattle real estate in the title!”
Sadly, there are many blogs out there doing exactly that.
“City Real Estate” in every title, and then liberally sprinkled through every post.
They read horribly but can rank well.
I’d prefer to write for the readers, not the search engines.
I don’t ignore SEO, but it is the least of my concerns when writing a post. My blog does pretty well on search engines, including Page 1 for terms like “phoenix real estate”, “phoenix realtor” and more”. But it’s really the Long Tail and much more localized terms that bring the clients in.
There is no “formula” for SEO and “formula-matic” writing likely rarely engages a reader and makes it difficult to show the real you. I tell people just be yourself. Some will like you, some won’t. Oh well. You can’t please everyone all the time, and that includes the search engines.
Completely off-topic, but does Wordpress.com allow the”subscribe to comments” plug-in?
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ARDELL
Hey Dustin,
I wrote a post on my blog today title Seattle Real Estate just for laughs.
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Dustin
Hey Tim… Thanks for the tips! Good stuff and at some point soon I hope to return to RCG to give it the next round of SEO love!
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Dustin
Jay, there’s no subscribe to comments (via email) as far as I know… but you can always subscribe to the RSS feed of the comments! (I do that!)
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Fej Tebroc
Im surprised the McKnights have not stomped a tirade that would read on a Richter scale or attempted to overload your server Dustin, for publishing such heresy!
I think Jimmy T had to file a restraining order for a post of similar context
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Tracy
I specifically clicked through to read Mary’s response. Hey Mary — your brand is slipping….
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jeff
you all need to get up to date on the current online marketing realm. Basic site structure/strategy is the first step, 99 percent of real estate static sites and blogs fail this, so to expect first page is naive!
Jeffrey
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jeff
you all need to get up to date on the current online marketing realm. Basic site structure/strategy is the first step, 99 percent of real estate static sites and blogs fail this, so to expect first page organic listing is naive! The days of questionable incoming link value is over (500 seattle real estate example), content is king, and structured content is
dominant. Justin, you seem to be a really bright guy, if you want to play in the SEM world for organics, you need to get up to speed and stop playing the last game!Jeffrey
Dustin
A trip down the memory super-highway…
Top 10 stories of 2007 from Inman News (see the article for details):
- Subprime market implodes; housing downturn worsens.
- Blogging runs deeper in real estate’s blood.
- Foxtons closes shop.
- Foreclosure problem worsens; Bush announces rescue plan.
- Redfin and “60 Minutes” of fame.
- Trulia and Zillow get booted from Prudential Real Estate convention.
- Realogy goes private.
- Well-known real estate writer dies.
- NAR’s Gateway project announced.
- FHA goes modern.
All good and interesting news stories. But what would a blog post be without some after-the-fact quarterbacking. Here are my thoughts:
The subprime mess definity earned the list, while I think blogging is in there purely as linkbait. Foxtrons never crossed my radar so I can’t say much about them, but I would have included the foreclosure mess in with the subprime mess (despite the fact that two smaller messes would be easier to clean than one huge mess). Redfin PR got proper kudos while Prudential made a PR blunder. Realogy business structure must be interesting to others and I simply didn’t know the author. I don’t have high hopes for Gateway (although I wouldn’t say the same thing for NAR’s investment fund). FHA… yawn…
And while am at it… here are two stories that would have made my list:
The launch of so many (already) forgotten sites. How about all the sites that launched with great fanfare only to fall off of everyone’s radar. Terabitz comes to mind. Social networks like Zolve (which went from charging almost $1000/year to $0/year in its first few weeks) and Propertyqube also seem to have dropped off the map. And there were many (way too many to name them all!) “local” sites that were hyped by the RE.net at one point or another: MyHouseKey (kinda dead), SuperListingSite (completely dead), Localism, StreetAdvisor, and YourStreet.
Lack of fiscal restraint in the online real estate space. Money flowed into online real estate space: Terabitz with $10M in V/C money… Zillow with another $30M… Trulia got another $10M… Redfin with $12M more…
a reader, -
Jessie B
What is it about the sites you think caused them to fall off the radar?
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Dustin
Jessie: I think it has a lot to do with the conversation that Jeff spurred. Why some sites have fallen off the radar is roughly the same as why I think the vast majority of tools fail… “I’m convinced the reason the vast majority of online tools fail in the real estate space is that companies think they can appeal directly to agents and still find success online. Those tools that attract LOTS of consumers (think: Zillow, Trulia, even Realtor.com) have a much easier time getting adopted by real estate professionals. Online sites that primarily appeal to real estate professionals are almost inevitably missing the magic ingredient of consumers.”
Your thoughts that the next generation site will figure out how to get even more comprehensive listings is definitely one track that could be an improvement for consumers…
a reader
If I may, not to hijack the post… Hyperlocal sites were doomed to fail (I said so at the time) because the key to their business and audience is hyperfragmented. The odds of two visitors to one of those sites finding (or contributing) content about a shared topic in a shared location are almost nil due to the sites’ hyper granularity.
Say there are 100,000 cities, counties, neighborhoods, ZlP codes or whatever geographical subdivision in the US, and an unrealistically high 10% conversion from casual visitor to contributor. The lower bound for having some content everywhere is 1 million visitors.
High-density and tech-savvy metros will be disproportionately filled out, with 99,000 no-man’s-land locations. As your audience expands outside of those early-adopter metros, new visitors come to a site that has nothing to offer to them, and requires them to enter content with the implicit guarantee no-one will read it.
Aggregating content up to larger locations (e.g. combine all ZlP codes’ content into a city) solves the density problem but defeats the site’s hyperlocal purpose.
This isn’t an easy problem, but the initial solutions were demonstrably doomed to fail from the get-go.
Dustin
Just chatted with Brendan King and…
…I believe him on two accounts:
- He resigned (was not fired).
- He is working on something interesting.
I won’t say (even if I knew) what he is up to but would be fascinated to hear some speculation on what the Point2 team members who left should build. Is there any empty space left to build a niche in online real estate? Would you start with consumers? As an agents, is there a tool that you wish you had?
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Anon
It makes me wonder if they had non-compete’s signed.
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Jay Thompson
Anon – They don’t need to compete with Point2 to be in the real estate tech field. (not that I know if they’ll even be in that field).
Great questions Dustin, I’m going to have to ponder that…
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loren nason
I can’t think of anything off hand.
But this just popped in my head.
Create a niche video site just for real estate agents. Make it an easy browser based tool that hook to your web cam, takes a video and then encodes it. This has been done already (can’t think of whom) but make it a site specificaly tailored to REALTORS and then it can auto post to their blog similar to how utterz can autopost
Make it dirt cheap – like 5 bucks a year or something like tat
hmmmm, nevermind i think youtube already can do that
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Dustin
Loren: I love the response!
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Michael Price
I didn’t really have a comment on this post, I just wanted to let you know that the weather on this blog is horrible. It’s wicked cold and it the snow is relentless!
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JWT
Dustin, this may sound a bit jaded, but I don’t think it matters what technology niche is left unfilled or if they intend to fill one. As Brian correctly pointed out, technology is not a solution, it’s a tool. People (the vast, vast majority) aren’t effectively using the tools that are already available… what makes any of us think a new tool is going to come along to change that?
The unfilled niche is a behavioral, not a technological. It’s focus would be on helping brokers execute on strategies to move their populations toward consistent and appropriate application of existing tools, and prepare them for whatever technology happens to come along to add value.
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Dustin
Jeff: I think that is a bit simplistic… My take is that the reason that agents/brokers aren’t using the vast majority of tools is that they aren’t getting a good return on their time/investment. I happen to think that there is still at least an undeveloped tool or two in the real estate space that will happily engage consumers along the lines of Zillow.
Call it the “Dustin Theory” (and people definitely got tired of hearing it around Move), but I’m convinced the reason the vast majority of online tools fail in the real estate space is that companies think they can appeal directly to agents and still find success online. Those tools that attract LOTS of consumers (think: Zillow, Trulia, even Realtor.com) have a much easier time getting adopted by real estate professionals. Online sites that primarily appeal to real estate professionals are almost inevitably missing the magic ingredient of consumers.
I really don’t care if its a new CMS, new listing tool, new social network, new blogging tool, new MLS backend, or new analysis reports… If you can get enough consumer eyeballs, the real estate agents will follow.
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Jessie B
Dustin, I think you right on in your comments. The simple answer is to start with the consumer first.
All really successful websites start at solving a particular problem for consumers in the simplest and most elegant way possible. If you build a real consumer grade application – i.e. easy to use, fast, simple, attractive, then traditional S curve adoption should happen. Once consumers are there, agents will follow.
I think in real estate the opportunity is in search.
Search – this is the most popular as it satisfies curiosity, encourages dreaming big, helps set life goals, Etc. The problem I see is that 99% of sites don’t actually provide access to ALL available inventory in the local area.
I think consumers want to see every available property in their area – regardless if it is one of the 70% or so of agent represented listings or the 30% of FSBO listings. As an example, some of the large broker sites only display their own listings… not very pro-consumer.
An example of this… if you are buying in Madison WI and you only search REALTOR.com the largest RE site, you are still missing over 20% of the total available listing inventory which is on fsbomadison.com.
The consumer wants inventory. Think about “full access” in the real world. The movie theater with the most screens, the supermarket with the most products, the wine shop with the selection, itunes, amazon.com, google, the online investment broker with access to most investment products all tend to be the most successful.
The new consumer wants access to it all; they want to narrow the properties they are most interested in first. They don’t want the agent as the filter / gatekeeper to which properties they will see.
Obliviously all the RE sites are trying to solve this issue but many will have a hard time due to limitations of MLS rules, real estate agent interests and the current game of keeping up with each others features.
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Dustin
Jessie: Your observations are very interesting… So is the fact that retrove appears to be building something that will provide just such a universal search of listings.
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Jessie B
Maybe…
Jeff Turner
Dustin… I don’t think looking at the behavioral issues is simplistic at all. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Certainly all logic speaks to real estate agents going where the consumer is. We’ve talked about that here for years. But even in places where the consumer obvioulsy is, like Realtor.com, the behavior of the vast majority of real estate agents does not line up with what can be delivered if the technology already in existence were used to it’s fullest. That speaks to different issues than technology, or an unfilled niche.
You are correct in stating that the majority are not seeing the return, but that’s only part of the problem. Those who use it correctly do see a return. So, it’s not that the returns aren’t there.
We may be addressing two different questions.
toddwcarpenter 8:08 pm on December 31, 2007 Permalink |
Why do I get a felling that #11 is not a “prediction”.
Jonathan Washburn 2:34 am on January 1, 2008 Permalink |
Todd,
No insider info for me; #11 is totally a prediction. The truth is I am sure Dustin could get a job anywhere, doing pretty much whatever he wanted in the real estate tech space. Just seemed like Curbed might be a good fit. (Plus it doesn’t hurt that they just landed some money from Mr. Inman.)
Dustin,
Thanks for the link!! Made my day.
ARDELL 11:56 am on January 1, 2008 Permalink |
I think Dustin’s going to stay a “free agent” in 2008. Many will get ‘ a piece of him”, but no one will “own” him. Frankly, no one deserves ALL of him.
Ricardo Bueno 1:42 pm on January 1, 2008 Permalink |
Hey Dustin,
Just droppin’ by to wish you a Happy New Year!
RB
Dustin 8:47 pm on January 1, 2008 Permalink |
Happy New Year to everyone again!
I think I’ll shy away from publishing my plans for 2008 at this point!