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Will Real Estate Go to the Dogs? or The Case for a Metasearch Engine

Published by Joseph Ferrara (2) April 14th, 2008 in Real estate search and Technology. Comments

Realogy just dropped 500,000 of its real estate listings on Trulia. (They will also be feeding their house listings to Zillow, AOL, Google Base, Frontdoor and other real estate portals). Windemere and Prudential have also jumped on the online syndication bandwagon to make their massive databases of home listings available to consumers. More will surely follow. That’s great for consumers. Or is it?

Listing, Listings, Everywhere… and So Many Places to Look

With all the big franchises syndicating their listings to various real estate search engines, consumers will have to visit all the search engines and portals to get a full picture of the available inventory. Their heads are sure to swim trying to navigate and visit them all. And will they see the same listings repeated as they go from the Frontdoor to the Z stop?

Will listings oversaturation and duplication lead to obfuscation? As we liberate real estate listings are we paralyzing consumers?

What’s It All About Arfie? Too much vanilla ice cream

I remember studying economics in college and thinking the theories sure looked good on paper but not buying a lot of it — I kept seeing too many exceptions to the rule, factoring in human nature. (being a devotee of differential and integral calculus, I wanted an irrefutable proof — numbers didn’t lie, like economists). Certain basic economic presumptions I found to be inconsistent with human behavior (I was also studying psychology at the time)– like people will make rational choices with complete information. Yeah, right. First of all, there was no such thing as “objective” rational choice (what I think is a rational choice may not be rational to you)— if this truth was subjective, how could you build any reliable theory on it? And the thought of having complete information made my head spin– I remember how difficult it was choosing a stereo receiver and speakers in 1971— any more choices and I would have been completely paralyzed and stuck with my radio/tape deck combination or let the salesman at J&R make the choice for me.

But there was one theory I did buy –the law of diminishing returns (or was it the law of diminishing marginal utility?) — it was the theory that says: You may like vanilla ice cream, but after eating 3 cones you could almost puke looking at another one (even on a sugar cone with chocolate sprinkles (jimmies to some folks).

Now what does this have to do with real estate listings, search engines and dogs?

I put forth the case that too many choices to search for too many listings will lead to consumer frustration. They will either simply choose a real estate agent (or someone else) to look for them or demand a better way to search. Now, here’s where the dog comes in.

Have you ever used Dogpile, the metasearch engine? Dogpile searches Google, Yahoo, MNS Live and Ask search engines, removes duplicates, to produce all the search results.

Here’s the logic behind Dogpile’s metasearch engine:

Aren’t all search engines pretty much the same? Funny, we thought that too, but they aren’t. In fact, different search engines often return different search results for the same query. Based on everything from how information is arranged on a web page, to what each search engine pinpoints as most relevant, search results can vary widely across each search provider.

Look, say what you will, but our time was important to us too. So, we had an idea to bring together the Web’s best search engines in one place and deliver the most comprehensive and relevant results, and metasearch was born. The solution is an efficient, single-search-box engine that makes things easier for all of us. Especially when you learn that our special technology removes duplicates and analyzes the results to ensure the best results are always on top of the pile.

If what Dogpile says is true and it applies also to real estate search engines, then perhaps someone will create a RE.Dogpile — a real estate metasearch engine that will search all the real estate search engines, remove duplicate listings, and help real estate consumers save a little time in the house hunt. Is this rationale? or a pile of hound poop?

Hmm… John what do you think?

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  • I think people will use their favourite engine for real estate just as they do for search. Few use Dogpile, in my experience, as it ither isn't as popular as Google or they just don't see the need to try something else. Then again, maybe real estate hunts will be different but I figure that people will have their agent(s) and be using a search site like Zillow or Trulia... or a VOW to keeping their options/ideas/inspirations open.

    Now if someone could do a decent amalgamation of all the FSBO sites out there, housingmaps.com, and blend that with realtor provided listings... hmmm?
  • This is something that reminds me of how good we have it here in Canada, both consumers and REALTORS®. MLS.ca is operated by the Canadian Real Estate Association (our version of NAR) on behalf of its members (REALTORS® in Canada). On this site you can search, coast-to-coast, every MLS® listing in Canada.

    Good for REALTORS® because there really isn't a market for services such as Zillow and Trulia, and it makes FSBO internet sites a lot less attractive, because buyers in Canada search MLS.ca first.

    Good for consumers, because there is only one spot to go. If it's on MLS® in Canada, it's on MLS.ca. Period. Granted, the data isn't exceedingly detailed, but there are links to the individual broker/agent websites where more information can be found.

    Why can't NAR put something similar together? I know the US Market is about 10 times as large as the Canadian one (based on population alone), but it shouldn't be THAT hard in this day and age to aggregate data from member boards across the country, right? This is what CREA does with MLS.ca each night.

    Tim Ayres
    Royal LePage Coast Capital Realty
    Sooke/Victoria, B.C., Canada
  • Joseph, what a great idea. Not sure that Dogpile is the engine of choice though (sure it was just an example). The concept seems fairly simplistic in theory. Then again, you would think that Dogpile would be much more successful than it is due to the fact that it performs this function already with other searches aside from RE.
  • All these comments are interesting.

    I can appreciate Will's point about incorporating the FSBOs for a more complete picture.

    And Tim makes a great case for REALTOR.com stepping up to the plate to do what MLS.ca has done.

    And Annie is right about dogpile. It seems it should be more popular-- maybe that says something about rationale choice. This leads to the possible conclusion that folks will eventually decide which ONE real estate search engine they will go to-- making one of the current players-- or some new kid on the search block-- the go-to site, a la Google.

    I think most folks would want to go one place to find everything-- so maybe Google will win the game-- especially since everyone has given them permission to crawl their sites.
  • For people working within the real estate industry, the duplication might seem innundating, but the average consumer won't see it that way. They will type into the search engine of their choice and go to the desired results. They might go to REALTOR.com, because the name branding was laid years ago. They possibly might digg around on Zillow, because they have read about it in a magazine or newspaper. But otherwise, I don't think the amount of duplication will be a problem. Once they are engaged with an agent, the agent will be feeding them the listings anyway by email.

    Now when Gen Y'er's become a bigger factor in the housing market, a search engine like a re-dogpile,might just come in handy.
  • Rebecca, exactly. I doubt anyone is looking for national listings, unless they are looky-loos -- Serious buyers are looking for listings in a particular city or area. Once buyers become more comfortable with the idea that a local agent has all the local listings, and as more agents learn to soft-sell and not hassle, buyers should start going directly to the local agent sites.

    It amazes me buyers haven't caught on to this easier, more efficient way already -- it probably has to do with not trusting they won't be spammed -- as soon as this problem is corrected and public perception is changed by internet-savvy agents, I see no reason to go through Realtor.com, Zillow or any of them.

    As a matter of fact, as far as what a buyer needs -- local information, i.e. personalization and context -- local realtor sites provide more value than national sites.
  • If local sites provide more value, how do you explain the success of national real estate search websites like Trulia?
  • What I find is that buyers start on the national search engines, but quickly move to a local broker's site that is more user-friendly. Then after selecting a few homes only to find that they are in-contract, it doesn't take too long for them to rely on their agent who can sort out the I/C's.
  • "If local sites provide more value, how do you explain the success of national real estate search websites like Trulia?"

    That's the question, Joe. Why? What I'm saying is that if buyers realized the efficiency of the local site and trusted a no spam experience, it could all change. I think more and more are realizing, judging from the increase in traffic I've experienced and by talking to others in the area who have good website exposure.

    I agree more people are going to Trulia, but I think the value for the serious buyer is in the local sites regardless of what the traffic suggests. One reason Trulia draws is just the looky-loo factor of national sites -- I have no need for that traffic, locally.

    I only want a large percentage of serious buyers looking to buy in Savannah. Trulia's traffic might be good for getting eyeballs to see ads, but the value lies in personalization, context and service.
  • Speaking as a buyer, I would prefer to go to one place to see the most complete, accurate and up-to-date listings-- my gut says it's from the local MLS. If that was on a local/MLS site, I would look there. If it was Realtor.com or Trulia, I would be there instead. But perhaps, as you suggest, the problem lies in the fact that most consumers do not know where to find the most complete accurate and up-to-date listings and do not even know where the best local sites are. So they bounce around from site to site.

    What I think happens is consumers who search online start on Google, type in local market keyword phrases like "town/city/neighborhood homes for sale" and probably bump into 1st page sites like Trulia & Realtor.com because of their excellent SEO vis-a-vis local market keywords. So, naturally they will get a lot of traffic. But does that high traffic mean they result in the most consumer-agent connections/sales? I'd love to know. Someone do a study.
  • yes, I've been writing open letters to Sergey and Larry to convince them that the best search results are the local realtor sites. They haven't answered me directly, but I'm sure they are looking into it. :)
  • Surely :)
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