4realz.net

I met the guys from softRealty in Atlanta last week and they convinced me the have a pretty good thing going. Their plan is to offer a free IDX solution to agents that is ad supported. (They also offer a $30/month solution that is ad-free).
They’ve got two* one thing working against them:

My [...]

…a competitor.

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I got an email this morning with a question I’ve received many times in different formats, so I figured it was worthy of a blog post:
Hello Dustin,
I am just reading the article in the Realtor Mag. I would like to talk with you about blogging. How do you set it up to connect [...]

…tool that aims to give each listing their own website.
Although I could do without the music, the example site they give is clean, full of features, and competitively priced at only $39 a pop (cheaper if agents buy in bulk).

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…attention from Tech Crunch thanks to this elevator pitch video:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMGo69yTdQw]
Simple, but effective marketing… I like it.    Congrats to Steve and the Ubertor team.

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…providing websites for brokerages.
White-labeling a quality broker site is decent idea for a business, but worthy of $10M in funding?
What do you think they charge for a website like this?   $10K/year?   $30K/year? Do you think they agree to go exclusive for an area?

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… BlueRoof360 in NYC (#44).  Great stuff and he recently posted more details on his blog…

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…personalized website for brokers route (example).  It’s nice to see that Terabitz is stil around (I didnt’ hear or see anything from them at RE Connect), although with $10M in funding, those had better be some expensive websites if investors are going to recoup their money.

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(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 [...]

…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 [...]

…attempting to outbid klaws well into the final hour.   However, it appears (if I understand the term “proxy” right) that klaws bid a huge number early on and no one else ever matched his high bid:

Interesting to note that in the final two hours the price rose by more than 100K!
Congrats klaws!
Now we know [...]

Saul is a top-notch guy in the industry and very well respected, but still… for Point2 to bring him on as the new CEO definitely has me scratching my head.
I’ve talked with Saul a few times at conferences and I really like him. What Saul brings to the table is some of the [...]

…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 [...]

…Instead of a real estate listing site seeking out content, a real estate “content” company (FrontDoor.com is the child of Scripps Networks which “owns the News Sentinel, operates HGTV, the Food Network, DIY-Do It Yourself Network, Fine Living and Great American Country and their Internet counterparts”) is looking to add listings to their portfolio:
“Scripps Networks [...]

…although I’m sure there is a logic behind the purchase of the brokerage Distinctive Homes and Land by their realestate.com division.
Maybe my problem is that I don’t really get realestate.com. I’m presuming they sell leads to agents (or what would be the purpose of their When AgentsCompete… You Win! product and calls [...]

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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…has taken a life of its own. I still follow EVERYTHING that happens on the site.   I make sure to read every post and comment that gets published.   Nonetheless, it has been wonderful that the site has taken a life of its own, but I find myself detaching a bit as my interests have varied. [...]

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Oddly, my computer at work doesn’t recognize the new DNS settings on the domain, so while I can read your comments (by translating this site from Russian to English… try it, it works), I can’t yet respond.

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