There are 3 major reasons why national real estate listing sites or portals fail to dominate the market for consumer eyeballs:
1. Lack of Brand Awareness: Based on our research, most consumers only know 2 websites to find property: Realtor.com and Craigslist.org. Sorry folks, that’s the truth. The reason is the lack of brand awareness generated by companies like Zillow–run an ad fellas– get a gecko or a Dr. Seuss character. (Expedia had that sing-song catchy ad). Yes, real estate professionals know about Zillow, but the man and woman on the street has no clue. At least Trulia has its name zipping along the streets of New York on taxi cabs.
2. Lack of Coverage. Realtor comes closest to having a lock on property listings because it has access to the MLSs in its network. One of the problems with Realtor.com is its fuzzy search. It also does not include For Sale By Owner properties.
3. Fuzzy Search. Consumers get frustrated when search engines produce results they did not ask for. Who wants to wade through tons of listings, many of which don’t belong there in the first place? We have always believed that inaccurate search results is one of the glaring defects of most real estate listing sites. The difficulty in culling or filtering results makes removing the “fuzzies” a frustrating endeavor.
Now comes Roost to the party with comprehensive MLS listings in a growing number of areas, obtained from broker IDX and local MLS feeds– they have 14 markets at present : Atlanta; Baltimore; Boise, Idaho; Boston; Chicago; Dallas; Houston; Minneapolis, Minn.; Orange County, Calif.; Philadelphia; Portland, Ore.; Sacramento/Modesto, Calif.; San Diego and Washington D.C. areas. They will expand into additional markets nationwide.
They are also forging partnerships with others to include FSBO listings and New Construction. This is an intelligent and all-inclusive approach.
Other Roost positives include:
- Searchable FSBO properties via ForSaleByOwner.com
- New construction listings
- Map based search
- 3 display views of search results (by listings, map or photo)
- Neighborhood search
- School district search
- Save your search
- Access to recent searches
- Easy filtering system to narrow results accurately
- Highlight feature to compare properties
- Roost has a blog
Since we regard ACCURATE search as one of the key ingredients of a successful user experience, I give Roost high marks here. Through limited testing, I was unable to find a listing that didn’t meet my search criteria. In other words, the search filters WORK. Granted, the parameters do not include advanced search features such as views and amenities but accuracy with what you have is paramount—but, it’s coming, via text based search.
Roost is on the right track. Good luck.
