Tag Archives: Redfin

Why I like Zillow and Redfin by ARDELL

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[photopress:3ofhearts.jpg,thumb,alignright]I’m still scratching my head as to why agents around the country hate Zillow so much that they want to call it “Z”. Theory is that if they even whisper the name Zillow, they are spreading “the word” and helping it to become even more popular.

Zillow is a system of mathematical calculations, a tool that is easy and fun to use. So isn’t hating Zillow like hating your calculator?

I like Zillow because before they came along, all of the lead generators were about buyers. Buyers went there to look at houses and hit the big flashing “Find an Agent” button and were taken off to never-never-land where the lead generator collected a toll. Buying buyer leads has always been a joke. I can hardly go anywhere without hearing someone talking about buying a house. Every coffee shop, restaurant, the lady in line in front of you at the bank, at least 20% of the people at a barbecue…really. If you need to buy a buyer lead you need to look in the mirror and figure out why you need to trick people into hitting a big flashing button and pay for one. Time to hone up your skills and get a personality.

The innovation of Zillow is that every lead generator has asked that question: “How do we attract SELLER leads?” Even House Values knows that they cannot get enough seller leads, and they can sell them as fast as they can get them. There are more agents willing to buy seller leads from House Values in prime areas, then there are seller leads to go around. There’s a waiting list…I know…I’ve been on it for over a year. Every time they email or call me I ask…you have a seller lead spot available for 98033 or 98034. Answer is always no, but they are trying to sell me something else. Because attracting sellers rather than buyers is something the lead generator industry has been very lax at doing well.

And then comes Zillow. I don’t know what they are selling, but they clearly have the seller’s attention. Did Zillow get an Inman award for that? If not…Zillow now has the ARDELL award for innovation in lead generating sites. Don’t be waiting for the trophy, I haven’t gotten out shopping for Greg and Sharon yet, and you’re behind them.

Kudos to Zillow. Don’t know where you’re running with that ball, but kudos for putting a seller oriented site in play.

I like Redfin, because…

a lot of my past clients who came to me from blogging,

tried them first 🙂

Corporate Blogs – Yes please!

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RSS IconDustin’s comments in his last blog post got me thinking (which is never a good thing). Dustin said “You just set my blogging efforts at Move back by a year or so”. To which I reply, “I hope not! You don’t have that much time!”

One of the cool good things that has happened recently is the rise of corporate blogging. What’s interesting is you’re finding them in places you wouldn’t expect. Did you know Dell has a blog, meanwhile Apple does not? I think it’s an excellent way for a company to get in touch with it’s customers (and vice-a-versa), without the reality distortion and corporate hubris that happens when communicating via a scripted “public relations firm” message.

You may be surprised to learn that even the venerable General Motors has blog (In case anybody from GM management reads this – Good luck turning the company around and keep up the great work at Cadillac and Saturn. I’m rooting for you). If a 100 year old company in the rust belt has seen the value of blogging, I have to wonder why hasn’t every large company? 

In case you doubt the potential of corporate blogging, look no further than Microsoft. Robert Scoble helped put a human face on the “evil empire”, by spearheaded Microsoft’s Channel 9 video blogs and wrote the book on corporate blogging. When he left Microsoft for PodTech, it created nearly as much news as when Bill Gates announced his “retirement”. An anonymous Microsoft employee, through his blog has changed the company for the better. Even though the Human Resources dept has a blog, and prominent engineers have them too, a small corporate blog can as useful as the MSDN blogging network is to the “Redmond Giant”.

I personally enjoy reading Zillow’s blog, RedFin’s blog, and Trulia’s blog every day. Even the HouseValues’ blog can be interesting on occassion (it seems like they have a fun corporate culture, even if they just sell leads for a living). But where is the John L Scott, Coldwell Banker and Windermere blogs? I know countless agents of those brokers and independent brokers blog and do it very well (I think I’ve seen most of them on Rain City Guide at one time or another), but where is the human voice of those companies? They should at least give me a way to search for their agent’s blogs. Are these brokers nothing but a logo for an agent to put on their marketing? They may not realize it, but I think they are losing mind-share (which may become market-share) by being silent in the blogosphere.

Which brings me back to my original question, regarding Dustin’s comment. When is Move going to get a corporate blog?

Although, Rain City Guide is an excellent blog, it’s not the most appropriate venue for Move specific information (nor should it be). Why hasn’t Move added RSS feeds to any page that offers e-mail alerts? How are Move’s product offerings better than other things out there? What cool stuff is Move is doing? Why would a Software Engineer want to work there? Why should a realtor advertise with Move instead of one of these “Web 2.0 upstarts”? Heck, why not feature profiles of happy customers (something HouseValues does well)? I’d love to hear somebody explain the the Innovator’s Dilemma that Move faces to your constituency, so they’d understand why Zillow, etc are steeling the mind-share that realtor.com used to have. What’s the best MLS in the country to deal with and why? If Dustin or his co-workers explained why things are the way they are, maybe somebody in a position to change things would read the blog and start talking? After all if GM blogs, the CEO of Sun Microsystems has a blog, and Mini & Scoble can change Microsoft, I think anything is possible.

I’m not trying to pick on Dustin, but I really want to add the Move blog to my RSS feed reader and I can’t!

Future of the Real Estate Industry?

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Hint: It is being discussed and decided this week, but not in San Francisco.

John Cook picks up this quote from Glenn Kelman of Redfin on what he will testify about when placed in front of U.S. House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity:

“I am going to say how much friction there is in the business,” said Kelman, adding that as one of the first online brokers Redfin has been “kicked and spat on” by the Multiple Listing Services in California and Washington.

Ouch! I’m sure that once he testifies, relationships with the local MLS organizations will quickly be healed. 🙂

If this topic interests you, then definitely check out John’s column because he provides some great links.

Inman’s Innovation Awards!

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Congrats goes out to all the contributors on Rain City Guide! We were nominated as a finalist for the “Most Innovative Blog Award” by Inman News. In my world, contributors are not only the people with their photo up on the sidepanel, but also those of you who return to give your comments on a regular basis. This site thrives off of your continued involvement!

The winners in each category will be announced in SF at the Inman Connect Conference. I’m definitely going to be there (I’m speaking on a panel on lead conversion)… Additionally, I would really enjoy organizing a meet-up of bloggers one evening. If you’re interested in joining us, then leave a comment below and I’ll send details as things get closer!

[photopress:Luther_engineering.jpg,thumb,alignright]In the meantime, I’m not proud to say that I didn’t know many of the non-blog nominations so I spent some time this evening on google researching the other companies nominated. Here are some notes (or at least links) I took while scanning the other nominees.

Most Innovative Brokerage

I wish Inman provided some more context so that I could know why they picked these particular real estate brokers. If anyone can let me know what sets these firms apart, please share!

Most Innovative Web Service

[photopress:Luther_engineering_2.jpg,thumb,alignright]Most Innovative New Business Model

Most Innovative Real Estate Blog

Most Innovative Real Estate Data Site

[photopress:Luther_engineering_3.jpg,thumb,alignright]Most Innovative Technology

Most Innovative Mortgage Company or Service

Most Innovative Media Site

Most Innovative Rental/ New Home Online Service

Our Home is Now Listed!

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And despite the fact that we may not have Ardell’s magic open house touch, we are showing it on Sunday between 12 and 3PM as described in the open house listing on Trumba.

Update:

I also created an adword campaign around our home. If you see the following ad while surfing the web, don’t click on it because it costs me money and just takes you to this blog post! 🙂
[photopress:beautiful_ballard_home.jpg,thumb,centered]

Funny side note… I decided to try out Google’s option to target ads at specific websites and noticed that Zillow was on the list for real estate related sites. However, in order to see the ad for my home on Zillow, I had to disable the one-two punch of Adblock and Filter.G on my Firefox browser. By disabling these two extensions, so many websites that I visit on a regular basis looked so much uglier! It was like traveling the web naked! It you’re not using the firefox browser with these two extensions, then you are almost definitely surfing a web that looks much more annoying than mine!

Want to live in the Golden State? Bring lots of Evergreen State money.

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[photopress:180px_California_state_seal.png,thumb,alignright]I recently returned from my almost annual vacation in beautiful California to visit my family and a few famous real estate bloggers (Dustin & Andy). And it was interesting to note what I learned about real estate in the Golden State during my two weeks down there…

Non surprises 

Bay Area real estate is still expensive. That wasn’t surprising at all. It’s been that way as far back I can remember. During my coffee talk w/ Andy, we discussed how the San Francisco side of bubble bay has popped, and the Oakland side is peaking. 

LA traffic is still awful.

Small Surprises

Santa Barbara is even more expensive than Silicon Valley.

Camp Pendleton is the only thing separting San Diego from Los Angeles & Orange County. I hope for San Diego’s sake, the Marines stay put.

RedFin has finally invaded the Bay Area. I wonder who’s next? 😉

Bay Area traffic is catching up to LA.

Big Surprises 

Home values in Southern Ventura county (home to Dustin’s new employer) are on the ridiculous side of expensive. In fact, it’s Silicon Valley expensive. I wasn’t expecting cheap prices (after all, I did grow up in California), but I wasn’t expecting this!?

I didn’t expect Santa Ynez to be as expensive as it is. Maybe Wacko Jacko’s Neverland ranch has done to Santa Ynez’s property values, what Bill Gate’s house has done to Medina’s? My parent’s home town (Santa Maria) is comparitively inexpensive, but it’s about as pricely as the Seattle Eastside is (median price ~$450K).

San Diego County is downright cheap in comparission to it’s neighbors to the north. In fact, prices there are less than 10% more expensive than Bellevue! Maybe being next to the Mexican border is keeping prices low, but I would’ve expected San Diego to be second only to Santa Barbara and the Bay Area. 

So what other markets in the country (or the rest of planet earth for that matter) have surprising prices (both more expensive and less expensive than you might expect)? I’ve heard from more than one local realtor, that many out of state real estate consumers have sticker shock when they first come to King County. And I’m still surprised that Portland is so cheap compared to it’s nothern & southern big city neighbors.

Using Alexa to Compare Traffic Across Sites

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Do you ever wonder how well your website and/or blog is doing in comparison to your competitors?

While there is not a great site on the web for getting accurate traffic statistics on competitors, Amazon does provides some stats based on people who are using their Alexa Toolbar. Rather than try to give total site hits (which they can’t do), Amazon gives us relative stats (as in “X number of people out of a million” visited this site). Here are some observations from some searches I did tonight:

All good stuff, but remember to take these statistics with a grain of salt. As Matt Cutts of Google discussed a while back, the type of people visiting a site can definitely skew these results greatly and considering Rain City Guide is in Amazon’s backyard, we’re more likely than most to have traffic from people with the Alexa toolbar installed.

Marketing my Home on the Internet

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While my opinion that a good real estate blogger does not include their listings on their blog is well documented and much debated, there is always room for an exception… and marketing my OWN home is one of those!

[photopress:kids_at_easter.JPG,thumb,alignright]Essentially, we have about two weeks left before we put it on the market. We’re just waiting for the movers to take our stuff and then, after we refinish the wooden floors on the main floor, we’ll be ready to list!

So, here are the internet marketing items I have on my checklist (of course, we’ll do some off-line stuff like putting together fliers, but I’m more interested in exploring the online stuff!)

  • Add Our Home to the Free Directories. Craigslist and Google Base come to mind. Are there others I should consider?
  • Blog About Our Neighbors. I know that there is very limited things that a real estate agent can say about the family-friendly nature of a neighborhood, but not having a license gives me the freedom to talk in great detail about are wonderful neighbors. Things I’d like to mention are all the kids that live nearby (8 kids within a few houses!), our regular Sunday BBQs during the summer and our weekly game nights during the Winter. (And I’m sure the neighbors would love it if the new owners continued our tradition of hosting the annual neighborhood easter egg hunt!!!). When moving to a new home, one of the biggest mysteries is what are the neighbors going to be like and because the people on our street are so cool, I’d like to put together an extensive neighborhood blog post! (Honestly, the hardest part of accepting a position in LA was leaving the neighborhood!)

    • [photopress:start_easter_hunt.JPG,thumb,alignright]

  • Financing Options. Interestingly, I’m in a place where I could offer the “right” people some innovative financing options… Like a lease-to-own, or something similar (as long as it is a win-win for both parties, I’m game for any idea!). Does something like this normally happen through the usual MLS channels or is there a special market for these types of properties? (Hint: if you contact me before we list, we might even be able to cut out some obvious fees.)
  • Blog About Our House. I promise not to overdo this, but I think one blog post about all the cool features of our home that might be too “personal” for the typical MLS listing would be appropriate on Rain City Guide. I’m thinking of things like the tree house I built in the backyard and the original art deco fixtures… I’d also like to add a map of all the recently sold homes (or maybe I’ll be lazy and just link to the appropriate ShackPrices page!)
  • Unique Icon. Robbie says he’ll give our home a unique icon on the maps of listed properties… Any ideas for what the icon should look like?
  • Enhance listing on Realtor.com. Around Move, people are shocked at how often real estate agents pay to get showcase listings and then don’t spruce up their listings by adding additional photos and other extras. Considering that Anna’s broker already pays for this service, I’ll make sure we spruce up our home!

    • [photopress:eggs.JPG,thumb,alignright]

  • Get on the Redfin Blog. If I provide a direct link from my blog to my listing on Redfin (and beg people to click on the link!) maybe I can blow out their single home stats for a day and thereby get a mention in their blog!!! (hmmm…. Is there a way to get on the Zillowblog?)
  • Newspaper Coverage? Is someone at the Seattle Times, Seattle PI, Seattle Magazine and/or any other local newspaper interested in writing a story about preparing and then selling a 1920’s Crown Hill (N. Ballard) home? We’ve got lots of great photos and I could probably write most of the story for you! 🙂
    (This reminds me… I did an interview for a real estate technology story that was suppose to be in the May issue of the Seattle Magazine. I never saw or heard anything about that story… Did this story ever go live? )
  • Picture Cloud. These guys just sent me a link for a free photo cloud. Interesting technology and easy enough to put together, so I think I’ll try them out with our home. (By the way, their branded option is free, but if you type the code “raincity”, they they will give you credit for five unbranded clouds for a penny.) If you try them out before I post my cloud, let me know what you think!

Any other ideas as I prepare the marketing plan for our home? Has anyone ever had any luck marketing a home on the internet? What did you do?