Tag Archives: tool

Pocket Listings in Seattle?

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I was a meeting this weekend with an agent in Southern California where he showed me a website he says he visits a couple times a week.   A competitor had built up a large repository of “pocket listings” for the Beverly Hills area and then stuck them behind a registration wall… of which he visited regularly.

Being a Rain City Guide kinda guy, I’m not keen to put things behind registration, but I am fascinated by the idea of putting together a page of pocket listings as a resource for Seattle area agents and consumers.  If you’re an agent who serves any area supported by the NWMLS and you’d like to advertise a pocket listing on RCG, let me know in the comment below.

If I get 5 or more pocket listings in the comment section of this post in the near future, then I’ll assume there really is demand for such a tool in the Seattle area and I’ll start up a new page (right between “About RCG” and “Seattle Agent Recommendations”) for pocket listings.

Here’s the only information I need from you:

  • Neighborhood
  • One to two sentence description of the listing
  • Contact information (name & phone)

For obvious reasons, I’m assuming that most agents won’t want to list the address of the pocket listing, but if you want to include that information as well, all the better.  And just to be clear, this is a free service of RCG.   Assuming it becomes a lot of work, I may charge a nominal fee to cover my time and/or automate the system, but I honestly don’t see that happening in the near future.

Are there rules for getting your pocket listing on RCG? Most definitely!   But I don’t even know what they are yet.   However, I will definitely figure out some rules if people start abusing the system.    Some potential rules that come to mind: (1)  Only allow agents to list their top 3 pocket listings, (2) must let me know if a pocket listing gets listed on the MLS and/or (3) must let me know if a pocket listing is no longer available. But even those rules aren’t hard-and-fast yet until I get some feedback from the community.

So, if you are an agent intersted in getting some additional exposure for your pocket listings, let me know!

Moving Forward…

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I’ve been a little busy lately, so I haven’t had a lot of time to give an update on some of my favorite conversations around the web… Nonetheless, I’m back for an abrivated version (i.e. only 9 articles instead of the usual 10)…

Beau turned me on to a great article by Jay regarding the 30-year trend for Mortgage Rates… Interesting stuff. Also, don’t miss Jay’s tribute to Harry Ramos…

I just got an email from someone at Windermere letting me know about Windermere’s new (beta) mapping platform… This is an update to the beta mapping platform they released a little over a year ago and I think they’ve made some great improvements… Here are some features I like: (1) Simple map-based search, (2) intuitive zoom feature, (3) Simple pop-up interface, (4) the filter tool is relatively straightforward, (5) viewing the details doesn’t require a page reload, (6) same with viewing the “list of homes”, (7) saving, emailing and/or contacting an agent can all be done without leaving the map view (8) simple city, state, zip box allows for easy navigation to distant locations… The only complaint I have is that the design doesn’t feel polished, but considering it is a beta and the technology works well, the design is minor…

Steve Weise also let me know about his map-based appraisal tool he recently released and asked me to solicit feedback from the RCG community… His interface is too GIS-specific for my tastes, but maybe other’s will find it interesting and/or useful.

Clever, but probably too simplistic, Rob let me know about his collection of quotes that compare the great depression to today’s housing market. Any way you look at it, he provides a good read…

Greg picked up the new Move commercials on YouTube… The latest fun news around Move is that my favorite commercial (Search) got picked up by AdForum and is currently displayed on their front page!

I really like how Zachary picked up the ball and started posting videos of his properties… They are not high art, but I think they are darn useful, especially for someone selling land in such a beautiful area!

Sometimes being a great agent means divulging the good with the bad… Osman tells us how people can and do loose money in real estate…

I hate homework too!!!

The NYTimes real estate blog is officially dead. (although it is everywhere now, I first saw it on Luxury Sarasota Living). I can’t say I’m particularly sad, because the main editor seemed to have such a thing against real estate agents that his blogging on the subject just wasn’t very interesting… (Marlow also noticed this tendency of Damon).

Swiss Real Estate Map Search Tool

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I really like some of the search options available on Immobilien-Suche, a Swiss mapping site.

Granted, I speak no Swiss whatsoever, (Now we need a universal translator!), but this site is quite easy to figure out.

Swiss Real Estate Search

So here are some of the things I really like:

  • Sliders
  • Sliders for Price, Rooms, and Size
  • Sliders with Statistics for Price, Rooms, and Size

Sliders, sliders, sliders! They are so easy to use! I wish more real estate search sites had them!

Ajaxian and Gregor Rothfuss have some more highlights of the search tool including:

  • tighter integration between list view and map (just mousing over a list item to show it’s location)
  • histograms for the search terms to give you a quick idea what the spread in prices is, for instance
  • shows matches in context (public transport, shopping etc)
  • leverages the superior map quality from endoxon
  • allows you to take notes for each object
  • shows you new matches for your search since your last visit