Zillow’s data aggregation prowess has pushed its chief economist into a new position as a member of the federal government’s open data advisory council. Stan Humphries will take a position as an advisor on the Department of Commerce’s panel intended to help government make better…

Project Upstream aims to become the defender and gatekeeper of brokers’ real estate listings nationwide.  The National Broker Public Portal intends to provide a nationwide display of data that puts brokers at the controls.  The former is not intended to exclusively fuel the latter (though it seems…

There has been a lot written about the possibility of a national Broker Public Portal for real estate–probably too much, for a project that’s nowhere near being off the ground yet.  Still, the idea rallies the spirits of many brokers, so it has legs. The…

I get a bunch of calls and emails every week asking for information about the RealGeeks website system we use.  I’m happy to discuss it, but I figured if I just wrote a review of our experience, it might save me a little bit of time…

We’ve had a lot of discussion in the GeekEstate community about Placester’s recent deal with NAR to provide IDX-fed websites to Realtors for $5/mo. I asked Seth Price, VP of Marketing at Placester, to answer a few of your questions.  We speak fairly frankly on…

Seattle’s technology brokerage, Redfin, recently acquired our local community metrics company, Walkscore. The guys who run WalkScore have grown their business into household name nationwide, and have remained the same gracious, humble, community-conscious entrepreneurs in the meantime. You can’t help but feel happy that Josh and Matt…

Imagine you’re one of the millions of Americans who have been locking in in record low interest rates on adjustable rate mortgages within the past few years. 4.0 percent on a 30 year mortgage is a good deal, but 2.25% on a 5 yr ARM,…

If you haven’t tried out Instagram’s new Hyperlapse app (and your Facebook feed isn’t already full of your friends’ time lapse videos), stop reading this article, get the app, and try it out right now. My first reaction to this app was that its ability…

As professionals, we’re often as fascinated by real estate statistics as consumers are. Price per square foot is one of the metrics that is frequently quoted in attempting to value homes for sale, and it has become a ubiquitous stat on real estate websites. While it’s…

As someone who spends far too much time commenting on others’ writing and discussing business online, I think I have a fairly good feel for user experience when it comes to online commenting systems.  Disqus and Facebook commenting seem to be the major 3rd-party players…