Real estate search has changed a lot in the past five years. Mapping, data overlays, better design and a freer hand with listings themselves have brought us some great models.
But search has nonetheless become cocooned in the soft fibers of conventional wisdom at this point: Properties should be displayed in a list, with thumbnails, next to a map mashup; "save this search’, while confusing, should always be among the user’s options; school and neighborhood data should hang off the listing detail page.
Trulia, Estately, Roost and others have raised the current paradigm to amazing heights. Joel at FOREM’s list of top search sites pretty much nails it.
What’s next, though? That’s the interesting — and important — question. Real estate search will surely look much different two years from now. Application and platform innovations are proceeding at a faster pace now than they were in 2003, when Web 2.0 first hit real estate.
Here are three things I think give us a clue:
#1: Searchme. This company launched this week in private beta. Take the time to watch the demo video. They are introducing something they call "visual search". If you own an iPhone or use iTunes, you’ll recognize this (I imagine Apple’s IP lawyers have too). I’m not convinced this will work as a general search paradigm, but imagine those pages you see are homes. The site information that appears at the bottom of the pages are listing details — beds, baths, etc. A "listing" contains a cluster of data, but it’s still fundamentally about a home, a visual pregnant with emotional triggers. Forget the blurry thumbnails in the list of search results to which we’ve become accustomed: show the homes, front and center, as the search result. Much better.
#2: Everyscape. I came across this site a few months ago when they launched their street-level view of Aspen, CO. They have since expanded to a number of markets. It’s something like Google Street View dialed up to 11. You can walk down the street online. Do the neighbors keep up their front yards? What’s in that strip mall down the way? This is now discernible from your computer. This, I believe, will supplant the mashups and aerial views that are tied to most real estate searches today. It will also send yet another shock wave through the Realtor value proposition. The role of high-priced chauffeur was already waning. This will kill it.
#3. Urbanmapping. One problem with the community or market information that’s often integrated into real estate search displays (usually in the form of tabs or links off the property detail page) is that the level of analysis is all wrong. In most cases, the data are presented at the ZIP code level, which often renders them meaningless. My ZIP code in Oakland, for example, includes high-end enclaves and streets I would not walk after dark. What users need is neighborhood level, even block level, information. Urbanmapping maintains a database of over 20,000 neighborhoods across the country and provides contextual information for all of them.
So … pulling this all together, the real estate search experience of 2010 might go something like this:
I, the user, enter: "Three bedroom Redwood Heights Oakland" into an online search site or real estate brokerage site.
My results are are full size photos of homes I can flip through and onto which are layered key data points.
I click on a link on one of these homes that says "walk down the street". I do just that, noticing that while the homes around this listing are well-kept, the duplex at the end of the block looks like it’s inhabited, Animal House-style, by kids from a nearby college. I don’t like that.
So I click on another link, "Check out the neighborhood". It gives me demographics, market trends, comps, and amenities for the small, somewhat serpentine piece of Oakland that is this neighborhood. I get the data, but also, because the semantic Web and data portability movements have born fruit, can show me something about the people behind the data, and how they are connected. In short, I get a view into something akin to a graph of the community.
I don’t buy a house here, but I’ve made an informed decision.
Of course, there are lots of concerns and questions here. Or maybe you buy none of this and see search headed in a different direction. My point is that you can count on the search experience changing rapidly and significantly over the next two years. It will give consumers more power. It will further dissolve the traditional Realtor value proposition. And it’s going to happen whether you’re on board or not.
So get on board. Think a few steps ahead. Forget about replacing your crappy IDX solution with something slightly less crappy. Hike up to where the air is thin, take in the view, and then find someone who can help you make it real when you come down from the mountaintop.
Anyway, I’ve just show you some of the things I see on the horizon. I am interested to hear what you see.
– Brian Boero
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It's nice to walk down the street online, but I think we'll still be driving neighborhoods 10 years down the road. So, take all of the things you mentioned and tie them together with GPS and the smartphones of 10 years hence, and you will have a walking talking public MLS that tell you everything about where you are now, where you want to go, and how to get there.
I hate to burst the Realtor value just fell a notch bubble but the problem with these sites is how often they will need to be updated. Take my county for example. If you had them drive through the entire county a year ago they would have seen the development at that time. Now you factor in that in that time they have started construction on a new mall, a new connection from one interstate to the other and the expansion of one highway into an interstate and you can start to see the value proposition creep back up. Tack on the need to know about most ideal daycares and mass transit etc. The value of a good REALTOR isn't going anywhere. How many good ones exist remains to be seen.
I wasn't there, but let's take a look back in time. I think it goes something like this. FLASH BACK IN TIME…The listing agent in the 1950's, and 60's would work to attract a ready, willing and able buyer. In addition there would be a cooperative commission available to any other agent who could bring a buyer to the table and close. This was all done in the best interest of the seller; since they were paying the commissions. Everyone was working for the seller. In other words, there wasn't any thing like the buyer agent gig we have now. This made sense at the time because conveying what the seller had to sell wasn't very efficient. It was tough to share info with the market place. Does anyone remember BOOKS of listings? Then came the 70's and along with it came the law suits that brought about buyer representation as we know it today. This idea has steadily been refined (in the courts of course) over time. Here we are today. Listing property for all to see is a snap or a click. It doesn't take much to convey to the world what's for sale. That's a direct contrast to the way it was when the process came alive. Furthermore, the commission paid to a buyers agent has remained stable and the listing side of the commission has has been eroding. However the fee is still paid by the seller and the buyers perception is that they don't pay (this is a philosophical question). CUTTING TO THE CHASE…So here's where my thoughts are for the future. Listings will be dime a dozen and the fee for delivering full market exposure will zero out to nada mucho. That's totally opposite from where we were. Sellers will continue to advance there ability to negotiate for themselves (self education or fallout from agents past). However they could look to real estate people for tactics and advice in a consulting way as needed. Again, that's totally opposite from where we were. On the flip side, buyers will continue to find the perceived free help available from agents that can earn a commission, paid by the seller, if they bring the ready willing and able buyer to closing. The buyer is the one seen as making out in the representation process as it relates to the fees paid for real estate services. On the other hand, the savviest of buyers will work with agents willing to share the commission for evading part of the work in find the next home or side stepping the client responsibility by working in a non agency role. Don't get me wrong, the full service thing will be around, but the growth in the market will be as I've describe. Consumers want it free, perfect and now. The trick is how to deliver it to them and still get paid for what you do.
I see it as an amazing time and an amazing industry to work in. The internet has brought so much to the industry and only will get better. As we speak those programs are being created that we will be amazed what we can offer clients regarding real estate.
I work in property search (in London) and I agree that it's a fascinating area to work in at the moment. We've developed a gorgeous little tool here at Zoomf which we also call 'Visual Search', although it's a different concept to the Visual Search described in your post. We allow users to draw on a map where they want to search for property, so they can find a school for example and then draw a 3 mile radius around it and see all the properties in that area. They can still filter these properties by features like 'swimming pool', 'victorian' etc just the way they can on the rest of our site. We've had some great feedback for this way of searching for property, as far as we know we're the only ones who do it. That being said, Visual Search is currently out of action for a few days while we make it even more snazzy…but it will be back soon with a vengeance!
Love the thought of all of this and can't wait for the next phase of real estate it really is an interesting occupation. It has technology, understanding finances and community growth and development, working with people, negotiation skills and much more.
The future of search will likely include data collection and mining of your search. Front-end website activity (search, picking favorites, viewing details, printing maps) will all be valued and fed into a CRM system which will help agents (assuming they’ve designated an online agent) determine how hot a prospect is.
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