Property Portal Watch has kindly posted an article I’ve written about the future of real estate search.
Here’s an excerpt…
“Everyone loves talking about real estate. But before you can share this information with everyone (Facebook, Twitter, etc) having all your favorites in one place is key. Bringing that off-line conversation on-line could bring the whole concept of “crowd sourcing” real estate search to reality.”
To read the full article please visit Property Portal Watch.
I just heard that OnBoard has closed or is closing it’s Ft. Lauderdale offices. The status of the employees at that office is unknown at this time.
The Ft. Lauderdale team was primarily responsible for building an IDX aggregation system and had developers who were also working on their fabled Lifestyle Search Engine (LSE). Many of the Ft. Lauderdale team members were former eNeighborhoods employees. eNeighborhoods currently handles IDX services for remax.com, coldwellbanker.com, century21.com, and era.com.
This is in concert with the news that OnBoard has entered a “strategic partnership” with Cyberhomes. Which states “Onboard Informatics has chosen Cyberhomes as its MLS listings feed aggregation partner. ”
So if I’m reading the tea leaves correctly OnBoard decided that it was easier to buy than build this technology. The move also comes on the heels of the “departure” of Rob Hahn.
Seems like OnBoard is scrambling. It was always puzzling to me why they wanted to build a national IDX aggregation system from scratch. I’m sure they found out quick that it’s not so easy.
The bigger question is the fate of the employees they hired to implement their strategic mistake.
