February 10, 2011 - Vendor Alley

Is this the future of listing photos?

February 10th, 2011

OMG!

I’m not sure if this is a new trend or something that I’m just being made aware of, but people are starting to show up in listing photos. And not just ordinary people, but scantly clad females……in a pillow fights?

Here a are just a few “listing photos” I recently pulled from this agent’s website (not craigslist!):

http://www.yourleaderinluxury.com/properties/index.htm

I wonder if this is going to be brought up at NAR’s next MLS policy committee meeting? Possibly a new classification, IDseX?

Thank you. Thank you. I’ll be here all night, don’t forget to tip your bartenders and waitresses!

Google selects Realtor.com

February 10th, 2011

This is pretty cool. Google, fresh off their retreat from real estate, has invited Realtor.com for next week’s Mobile World Congress. Realtor.com’s app was one of only 4 selected for the Android booth. I’ve haven’t played with their Android app but their iPhone app rocks.

I wonder who are the lucky Realtor.com reps that get to go to Barcelona, where the conference is being held. At this same conference last year Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7.

Muy bueno Realtor.com!

Another nail in the coffin for map search?

February 10th, 2011

I’ve been super busy and haven’t had time to post but thought I would jot down a quick note about Zillow’s decision to switch back to it’s list view from their recent map centric search screen (gusty move and shows that Zillow is not afraid to push the limits but still have the confidence to listen to its customers)

It seems to be a growing trend. Back in November Seth Siegler (cofounder of Simplistate, an eco-friendly, virtual real estate brokerage) wrote a post on TFOREM titled “Why Map Search Is Dead”. He had some good points of why map based search is a terrible idea.

Redfin‘s approach is most likely the best I’ve seen, but I’ve never been a big fan on map search UI/UX.

Recently Real Living launched a new national web site and the decision was to also forego the default map screen screen and go right to the list view.

Add to that Google‘s recent decsion to drop real estate listings from Google Maps, and I quote “In part due to low usage,”.

Me thinks me spots a trend.