Here is some more information about some changes in the real estate industry around North America. With the addition of Zillow.com, HouseValues.com, Redfin.com, GoogleRealEstate.com and others, companies like RE/MAX, John L. Scott, etc are making changes to how they operate to compete in this changing market.
Companies in Vancouver trying different things are:
MacDonald Realty with their MacAuction.ca and their Eastside Vancouver Project.
Dexter created a website for Assignments – www.dexterassignments.com
Here is a post for INMAN’s blog about some of the changes:
New strategy: Give them what they want
The Northwest Multiple Listing Service (Seattle), a regional MLS that serves western Washington, is making available sold property information to real estate companies for public display. John L. Scott Real Estate today announced that the company now carries the comparable sold property information at its Web site, http://www.johnlscott.com/.
The latest news follows a bunch of other related announcements on unleashing more real estate data on the Web:
1. Last Tuesday, two real estate tech companies, Visient and IntelliReal said they’re teaming up to create an automated valuation model that will combine assessor property records and MLS data for real estate pros to offer home valuations to consumers through their individual Web sites.
2. Prudential Real Estate Affiliates earlier this month said its agents can now offer seller clients some detailed Web traffic statistics about their homes and other neighborhood properties.
3. Zillow made a much anticipated move in February with the launch of its Zestimate service that enables anyone to log onto to Zillow.com and find out the estimated value of their home or any home in their neighborhood.
4. RealEstateABC launched in March as a rival to Zillow. Both sites offer home-price estimates to consumers at no charge and without requiring any form of registration.
5. ZipRealty rolled out a “Price Track” feature in January that displays a for-sale home’s price history, including the amount and date of each price reduction. If there are multiple price reductions, users can view each time the price was dropped. Buyers can also see the number of days each house has been on the market in most regions at the Web site.
How long before other MLSs roll out the sold data?
–Jessica Swesey, Inman News