I was playing around with Trulia today, and immediately noticed the “snow” on the home page (which you can turn on/off). It’s often the little things that make a brand personable, and win over consumers. Have any agents/brokerages implemented home page changes to add seasonality to your consumer experience?

On the heals of the recent news by Surefield, another Seattle-based brokerage you have probably heard about – Redfin – announced their own Automed Home Price Estimates today. You can type in an address here, and you’ll end up on a property page such as…

Surefield launched their Pricepoint this week (see GeekWire coverage), which you can test out here (coverage for properties in Western Washington only). The concept of personalizing an automated valuation model with custom comps is not new, of course. During my time at Zillow, I spoke with consumers…

Everyone knows I used to work at the big Z, and still have many friends there. That said, I have to hand it to Realtor.com…their “House Wrap” campaign is a great creative marketing strategy (press release here).   PS: Congrats to Krisstina and Good Life Realty for representing…

Revaluate is focused on giving you everything you want to know prior to buying (or renting) a new property (see coverage here). Formerly focused exclusively on New York city, the site is now available in the San Francisco market. They developed a pretty nifty map of the most livable…

HomeCanvasr, one of the many attempts to put a marketplace around pocketlistings, launched a new site this week. notonstreeteasy.com Ballsy guerrilla marketing move. I like it. The team also launched HomeCanvasr 2.0 and raised a round of funding, which you can read about here.

An acquisition hot off the presses this morning: Move acquires Reesio. + Of course, anyone that follows this industry knows this acquisition shouldn’s surprise anyone given Zillow’s recent move.

A few things to note… A good read by Rob about commissions. Riley allows agents to claim ZIP codes for free right now. More info here: http://www.textriley.com/brokerSignup A bit of news about on Uber and their ongoing challenges with independent contractors (their drivers). The topic of independent…

You should all go read Rob Hahn’s latest post: The Future of Real Estate, According to Zillow. It’s a topic the industry — and specifically brokerages/franchises/MLS’ who make money from headcount based business models — should think deeply about.  

This isn’t really news anymore (I meant to finish this post earlier this week), but wanted to call attention to the fact that Zillow Mortgage Marketplace recorded over $10M in revenue this past quarter (see press release here). I’ve long thought mortgages was the massive sleeper component of…