4realz.net

…thinks so.
On Zillow’s failings:
“Zillow is so 2006. The business model is based on advertising CPMs, and now that the real estate bubble has burst, it’s much less fun to track the (sinking) value of your home. There’s more competition as well, including Trulia and Redfin.”
On Trulia’s success:
“If location, location and location are what real estate [...]

I think I’ve recovered enough now to actually post about it!
Despite our best efforts to be prepared, the day started off a bit rough with a nearby mudslide taking out power in our building in the morning (meaning no hot coffee and no projector) and a 9-car pileup on a nearby freeway [...]

As I said to when I started the 4realz interviews, I reached out to four players in the real estate technology space and asked them a similar set of 9 questions.   I purposefully picked four people representing four different companies at different stages of development and different types/levels of funding.   First was Marty [...]

…phenomenal job reaching out to the RE.net.   I think Louis is hitting all the right buttons in terms of being controversial, interesting, and engaged.

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After interviewing Marty last week, I thought it would be interesting to turn to Alex Chang (CEO of Roost) in order to get the perspective from someone entering the real estate search space from a different place in terms of timing, funding and resources…
I first met Alex while we he was setting up shop at [...]

…get the usual web2.0 definition.   Think: Consumers.

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…Realtor magazine!
Lots of RE.net names mentioned in this article in terms of both people and companies.   Fun stuff all around.
(h/t to RE Tomato)

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…Move, I landed a 30-minute meeting with Dan Rosensweig (COO of Yahoo at the time), where I tried to convince him that I should lead up a team for Yahoo to build a platform that would help real estate professionals market themselves at a local level using the various tools Yahoo had in-house (at the [...]

…the Zillow machine, but I seriously doubt it…
I 100% agree that someone could seriously improve on the existing CRM products for agents… During our after-lunch conversation this past week, I mentioned that if Trulia really wants to reach marketing dominance some day, they should offer a free, high-quality CRM to agents. [...]

(some names left anonymous to protect the innocent)

There’s a hell of a lot of VC money floating around this industry. I was surprised at how many people there were with lots of VC funding. Joel seemed to notice the same thing: “a whole new crop of real [...]

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 [...]

…Linkedin, the Wii, Kayak and more…
I only wish the our political parties provided such compelling voting options!
(via Toni and Spencer)

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…naturally go together.  But if anyone at NAR can pull off Second Century, it would be Mark Lesswing.
Real estate tech startups: it’s time to rev your engines.
“Lesswing said that the company is already accepting submissions for project proposals. He also said that he will be in attendance at the Real Estate Connect conference in New [...]

…getting to know your neighbors online. The idea behind Neighborrow is that you would join a group of people in your neighborhood who have all agreed to share things.
Kristen over at Mashable thinks it is the algorithms that will make-or-break the site, but I’m thinking it is a much more uphill battle than [...]

…just playing around with the ability to compare markets for different features. For example, did you know that Miami area leads the country in listings with waterfalls? North Las Vegas with birdhouses? (are there even birds in Vegas???)
I’ve seen a few keyword search tools around real estate listings and Vast hasn’t even [...]

Joel answers my question about what happens to ARES!   I wonder how much someone will pay for 1.3M active listings?

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…monthly payments, I’ve always thought it would be interesting to mix rentals and homes-for-sale based on this criteria. But now that I see it in action on HotPads, I’m not so sure (although it might just be the pulsating graphics that got to me). The folks at HotPads tried to help out [...]

Remember that Edgeio, the web2.0 classified site, bought a major IDX provider about a year ago…
Now that Mike let us know that Edgeio is closing its doors, I can’t help but wonder what will become of the hundreds (thousands? tens of thousands?) of broker and agent websites that ARES powers.

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…,Madison Real Estate Shows, after he emailed me with some really interesting suggestions for REALTOR.com websites. Too bad I can’t help much…

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Favorite quote from Rich Barton in Wired interview:
Wired: Can sellers really be trusted to give honest appraisals?
Barton: It’s kind of like a warts-and-all corporate blog — stuff is going to come out that you wouldn’t want, but everybody ends up better. It’s a very modern concept. Smart homeowners get it: If there was a flood [...]