It was a beautiful Portland summer morning. Quiet. Cool. Before the heat of the day really started cranking up the thermometer.
Between juggling a fussy baby and and even fussier Labrador, I finally got to my local Starbucks for my morning coffee. In the calm of that moment, staring over my steaming cup, I pulled out my iPhone and fired up the new Facebook app. Nothing unusual there: part of my morning routine these days is to see what’s been happening in my friend’s and family’s lives.
Only this time, I checked-in first and let them all know where I was.
Check-in behavior like this has provided the foundation for all kinds of popular apps of late (Foursquare, Pegshot, Gowalla, just to name just a few), has distracted others (Yelp) and has, no doubt, firmly established geo-location as one of the hot new services in the mobile category.
So when Facebook launched its Facebook Places product last week, it came as a pretty big splash and, I think, threw some cold water on this party. Thanks to the sheer weight of the social network‘s user base, this mechanic is soon going to be ubiquitous.
What’s left, therefore, is just the sprinkling of features on top. The layering of ego (Foursquare’s mayorships), design (Gowalla’s badges) or gaming (Booyah’s Monopoly-like MyTown) give each of those services their own unique flavor. And it remains to be seen which, if any, have any real staying power.
Facebook has effectively commoditized the check-in.
All this got me thinking, though. This is where things for real estate start to get really interesting.
My cup of coffee was going to get cold.
What does the check-in mean for real estate?
So far, we’ve seen only a handful of geo-location apps built exclusively for real estate. The first, Agent Footprints, is launching soon and was built by the guys behind Neybor.com. It promises to document (through the check-in) “a real estate agent’s professional life including listings, sold properties, and more importantly, visited properties.”
Basically, an agent can check-in to any of the for-sale properties in the system and indicate that they’ve viewed the home. I got a demo of this app recently and it’s pretty darn impressive. The implications at both the broker and agent level already have us thinking of ways this can be utilized.
The other, HomeFinder.com’s Race for the Home event in Atlanta, is going down on September 18. Through a partnership with the SCVNGR, 1,000 of HomeFinder’s home buyers are going to compete in a series of location-based check-in challenges in an effort to win a down payment on a new home.
[Disclosure: 1000watt Consulting has performed consulting services for Homefinder.com in the past]
And while both of these are creative examples of business and consumer-focused use cases for the check-in, the greater potential here is staring at us in the face.
Coffee is getting colder. Ideas smoldering.
In real estate, the check-in by itself is largely meaningless, but bolt that check-in to a simple qualitative query – like “Did you like this property?” – and bingo, you start to have something really interesting.
Brian and Marc and I have talked at length about John Battelle’s idea of the Web being a database of intentions.
So with a simple yes or no response added to a check-in to a home, you start to have a series of geo-coded markers of intention, in real space, tied to real homes.
This is powerful stuff. In the aggregate, this data could serve to power Amazon-like recommendations to a home search. Sliced and diced it could even serve to help determine the saleability of a home itself.
Shared through a filtered social graph, this could even serve to aide the home-buying process among families.
But why stop there…
- Imagine a Weeplaces-type visualization of color-coded “likes” and “dislikes.” Rolled up at a macro-level, this could give us fascinating insight into the popularity of certain neighborhoods.
- Imagine an enhanced StreetAdvisor.com with a leaderboard for every block, the most popular homes floating to the top.
By now, my coffee was ice cold. Perfect, given the rising heat of the day. I stood up, gathered my belongings and wandered up the hill in my village back towards home. On my way I noticed a new home that had just gone on the market.
I thought to myself, man, that’s a cool house. If there were only a way to tag it, like it and share it.
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Much of what you are saying makes sense. This is precisely why Pegshot’s team released a version of Pegshot for real estate, where each video or photo could be tagged to specific addresses. For property marketers, they could quickly attach a video to a listing. For home hunters, they could have a visual diary of their hunt.
*Note: Pegshot for real estate needed to be rolled into our other apps (rather than exist as a stand alone application), so it is not currently available in the app store.
However, I think where these ideas break down is with intent and payoff: ie…what is the payoff of adding this info? If it’s a home hunter, they don’t want others to see the gems that make up their shortlist of potential homes. So, what would the agent, broker or home hunter (the “why?”) out of this?
I love the idea of transparency.
It will be interesting to see what limitations the MLS service puts on this type of communication. In our area an agent is not allowed to publish an editorial (ie: blog post) or make remarks in a public forum on properties they do not list themselves.
If I checked into a listing of an agent from another firm – I would not be able to answer that “yes or no” question on that social media platform.
I do think there is some benefit for my clients and potential clients to know what I have seen in the market. This way they would know what I would be able to chat about specifically the next time we chat or email. It would also be a great way to demonstrate the simple fact of how many properties we visit and that we are very active in our market – always looking and showing property.
The down fall of the above statement… What if we are having a slow week, take a few days off, or better yet show the same property to more than one client. Would that be misconstrued Then what if other agents who have potential buyer for the same home, knew I took my client to the same home three times in two days… how would that effect offers and negotiations? On the other hand what if I knew the listing had not gotten a showing in the past two weeks. Then there is always the friends of my clients only following me online to learn what homes I am showing their friend. Confidentiality is very important.
I love the idea of transparency. But I want to make sure my buyers and sellers are represented to the best of our ability.
Interesting ideas and I like the creativity.
[...] likes of foursquare, the trend is likely to continue. But what does that mean for real estate? In Tag it, like it, share it Joel takes a look at some creative ways the real estate industry is gearing up to use geo-tagging.8 [...]
[...] likes of foursquare, the trend is likely to continue. But what does that mean for real estate? In Tag it, like it, share it Joel takes a look at some creative ways the real estate industry is gearing up to use [...]
[...] What does the future of geo-based check-ins mean for real estate? Joel has some pretty good ideas how in the future we may rate homes the same way we rate restaurants in Yelp. [...]
oh my god a lot of the feedback most people come up with usually are such stoner remarks, now and then i wonder if they truthfully examine the content pieces and reports prior to posting or if perhaps they essentially gloss over the titles and publish first thing comes to mind. anyway, it’s satisfying to go through wise commentary here and there when compared to exact same, dated post vomit which i usually see on the web
[...] understand that. And Joel has pointed out some of the interesting possibilities. There’s a larger story [...]
[...] understand that. And Joel has pointed out some of the interesting possibilities. There’s a larger story [...]