There’s news today that Frontdoor.com, the real estate Website powered by Scripps Networks Digital (of HGTV and Food Network fame) has acquired openhouse.com from Realogy. Scripps controls the domain and, more importantly, has completely refashioned the site to fit within the larger FrontDoor.com experience.
This is a winner for everyone:
- Realogy unloads a property to a partner (along with their brand listings) that can drive vastly more traffic to their brokers and agents
- Other brokers and brands will have fewer reservations about sending their opens to the site now that it’s owned by a neutral media company
- Consumers will get more open house listings wrapped inside a site run by a company that is masterful at creating engaging consumer experiences
Realogy should be given credit for having the vision to create a site dedicated to open houses, which had been a notable absence in the category for years. But this brings things to another level.
Think about it:
HGTV, the cable channel, reaches 95 million U.S. households.
One of their most popular shows is Open House Sunday, which airs for three hours every week.
There will be lots of openhouse.com tie-ins on air.
That’s a tight, powerful bit of distribution.
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I need an app for that.
This is fantastic news. Looking forward to seeing what comes out of this new ownership.
Smart move.
Now, can anyone tell me exactly how to post an open house there?
Pretty cool! They have quite a bit of quality info on their site too… I just emailed them asking if there any sort of public API options that they provide. Will see what they say.
It’s about time someone did something productive with that site.
Glad you asked, Kris. Re: OH data submission, currently we’re taking data within the daily property listings feeds your broker or listings syndicator sends to HGTV’s FrontDoor.com. It’s in the feed spec. If you’re not yet doing it, talk to your administrator re: submitting the info. If you previously used the Open House Now self-serve tool, this has been disabled in the process of migrating to FrontDoor. (FYI, we’ll relaunch a self-service app in 2010.) Other options: if you work thru Point2, ListHub or Reliance Network, contact them re: delivering your OH info in their daily listings feed to us. Still have questions? Email me & I’ll help: kroark@frontdoor.
Jim, thanks for keeping us on track. Admittedly, we’ve been low profile for the last 12-16 mos ” it’s taken some time to create 52 locally written, locally filmed city guides, 5,500 how-to RE articles/videos and a Facebook integration for you to easily share these articles with clients and start more RE conversations.
Still a lot of work to go, but we’ve seen some promising momentum when we hit 1MM monthly uniques and are now focusing on incremental listing traffic for broker/agents thru our partnerships w/TV news websites + online newspapers across the U.S.
Bob and Max, suffice to say, the dev schedule has been pretty busy, so no “immediate” plans to launch an API. But I promise there are some interesting things in the pipeline for early 2010 now that we’ve got the foundation of the site built out.
Thanks for your reply Kelly! In the question that I submitted today, I also asked about specific data usage off your site. Is there a way you could take a look at my email, or make sure a right person gets? Thanks!
Kelly –
By “that site” I meant Openhouse.com, not Front Door.
What you’re doing has been interesting to watch, and mighty impressive.
Max – where did you send? Would you forward to me at kroark@frontdoor.com? I’ll resp 1st thing in AM.
Jim – thx for the comment. Wasn’t sure which site
. But wanted to let you know what we’ve been up to since we really have been pretty quiet in the industry up til about the last 2-3 mos!
Kelly, I don’t have a copy – I used your online Contact form http://www.frontdoor.com/Buy/Contact-Us/1629/?t=b I chose “Partnering with FrontDoor/BizDev” topic for the question.
Thank you.
Thanks, Kelly. Using ListHub, so I’m on it.
Kris
Can you tell me about ListHub?
Again you are the master of clarification. You take the loose ends and tie them together to make sense.
Aloha,
Keahi
I’ll have to check all that out. Actually, not really. Don’t need another item in my list. Gotta get these 20 tabs read and closed on my browser for starters. Then my daughter wants to carve the pumpkin. And who knows that the wife’s problem is..
LOL!
I second Jim’s first comment- ’bout time. We’ll certainly be watching what happens!