Tag Archives: Zillow

A Wheel! I’ve Never Heard of That…

I think I’ll build one too!

Its amazing how much time is spent reinventing the wheel. Business partners often create the same website features, tools and widgets over and over.  I’d like to see the day when companies truly recognize that the typical services that they supply to their customers are just a fraction of what they could be selling them.  But the flow could also reverse and the customer may have developed a tool that the supplier needs.

Builders, brokers, real estate agents and real estate portals are all developing, having developed or using similar and in many cases the same tools.  So why doesn’t ZillowTrulia or NewHomeSource offer their maps or other features? They can all gain information and perhaps a way to offer a wider network of ad partners across the new partner sites.

Until that type of cooperation happens I’ll keep reinventing the wheel and trying to create the better mouse trap.

Real Estate Social Media to the Next Level

I’ve been thinking about when real estate will truly be taking social media to the next level.  Century 21 announced that they are moving their rather large TV media spend to online.  So where are the putting it?  Where is everyone else putting it?

Judging by Hitwise the majority of the money is going to PPC and some banner networks.  That is of course speaking on average among builders, brokers and real estate portals.  But where is the spend toward enhancing the sites or creating new tools that let their customers truly do the marketing for them with word of mouth?

It has to be coming.

I’d look for one of the big builders, Zillow or Trulia to be doing something bigger.