Comments on: How cool is our home search? Ice Cold!

By: Real Estate Taxi

Real Estate Taxi — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:20:48 +0000

I enjoy getting a second opinion on pricing a home. I also like to see what the home sold for and see what the various websites say they were valued at.

By: Bryan Wilson

Bryan Wilson — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 16:08:29 +0000

I absolutely think that allowing profile based services to buyers is going to be a big thing and should definitely be considered. The ability to save searches, have new listings emailed that meet the buyers criteria, and being able to define and save searches for “auto alerts”.

By: Robbie

Robbie — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 21:34:23 +0000

Doh! Fixed. I need revision control software, so my server and dev machine stay in sync.

By: Rian

Rian — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 21:17:13 +0000

I think that you need to update the variable in the SQL generation code as it looks as if the home search tool is searching all neighborhoods again.

By: Robbie

Robbie — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 07:49:46 +0000

Joe – As for which one is more accurate, I’d say it’s more likely we currently are (but your mileage will vary wildy). I think Zillow currently suffers from an abundance of old data. Most houses in King Co have probably gone up at least 15% in the past year. So the public records Zillow uses to compute it’s Zestimates are so old that the numbers it comes up with are just wrong. However, since Zillow is now a member of NWMLS, I’d be shocked if Zestimates for WA state don’t start getting much better.

We suffer from a lack of data and a dumb evaluation model. Caffeinated estimates are like dumb realtors. We look at the houses that are for sale on the market (which is usually a much better gauge of what your house will sell for than public records), which houses are nearby and about the same size, and use their average price per sq ft. to determine our estimate. However, if the houses that are on the market and are close to your house are not directly comparable (like your neighbors are on the water, and you aren’t, or you have a new house and they don’t, etc.), then the my model falls apart.

At any rate, we both have a lot work to do.

Brad – If you can get the raw data from your MLS into a database server (or into anything stored on your machine), we can start talking. There’s usually a large amount of red tape involved with software consultants getting access to MLS data, however.

Bart – Email listings are something I’ll get to eventually. Until I get around to it, you can try out http://www.squeet.com to e-mail RSS feeds.

Bart & Ardell – I’ll put age searching on my to-do this week list.

Rian – Thanks for the bug. Resolved as fixed. Cause: Developer error (it helps to use the right variable in the SQL generation code. Doh!)

By: ARDELL

ARDELL — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 19:07:17 +0000

My comment, like Bart’s, was for year built as well. Many of my clients want to see homes built in the last ten years. I add remodels as I come upon them, as those considering only newer homes, will also consider a fully remodeled home.

By: Rian

Rian — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 19:01:18 +0000

Great search tool, however your most recent change seems to have broken the tool. If you click on crown hill you get search results from Beacon Hill. However, keep up the good work.

By: Bart

Bart — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 15:58:52 +0000

Robbie, great work on the home search. I do have a couple of suggestions. I’d love to see the ability to limit searches based on the age of the home. My wife and I are interested in old homes (1900-1930) in Seattle so being able to limit a search to those years would be great. Also, is there any way to email listings to someone? I’m usually the one who browses the search and being able to email listings to my wife would be great. Other than that, awesome tool and keep up the good work!

By: Brad

Brad — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 12:49:43 +0000

As a broker/owner of a small real estate firm in Woodstock, GA, I am interested in learning how to incorporate the residential data with the commercial data. As you can see on my site (www.maxsellrealestate.com), I subscribe to 2 different services iHomfinder.com and loopnet.com to integrate both property databases into my site.

I am also interested in being able to SMS property data from a cell phone inquiry (similar to Google SMS, except to my website to search MLS data).

Also, do you sell your search programming services?

By: Seattle’s Rain City Real Estate Guide » Real estate blogs spark key industry debate

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 08:42:23 +0000

[...] Probably the oddest part about a formal interview like that is that after 30 to 40 minutes of talking you know that they are only going to use a few quotes. Nonetheless, I was glad to see that Jessica picked up on the two most valuable aspects to Rain City Guide: (1) the great contributors and (2) the excellent home search tool developed by Robbie. [...]