I saw the news that Homesnap and Broker Public Portal formed an equally owned joint venture. (click here for prior writing on Broker Public Portal) A few things… First, I’m still unclear EXACTLY what the goal of Broker Public Portal is? Second, is the new joint venture…

I almost bought an Echo Dot for $49 this week (affiliate link), but didn’t quite pull the trigger. Earlier today in Inman’s FB group (Yes, you should attend), I came across the following demo video from Voiceter Pro (they bill themselves as the conversational search company) of the…

SRE Matrix has $200 million in funding from Takeshi Sekiguchi, operating a discount model in Hawaii and San Diego, and looking to expand (see Inman). What are they doing with all that money? Building another national portal… The brokerage planned to have set up shop in…

Can you still build a real estate search portal? Yes, absolutely. Anything is possible. That said, if you plan to build a portal and compete – you need to win the consumer (buyers), somehow. Without buyers, no one in the industry makes any money. So,…

Brian Boero from 1000Watt has alluded to a theme in previous writing (I can’t remember the exact post though to link to): The post-internet-enabled real estate experience is worse than before. He mentioned that again on an Inman Connect panel I saw last week in San…

Homely, an Australian real estate portal, just released their new iOS app. Its clean, simple, and includes big, gorgeous photos. All good things for a real estate search app. I’d encourage everyone — particularly those working on property search websites or apps of your own – to…

Read Rob Hahn’s latest post – Dear Real Estate Tech Entrepreneurs: Hey, The Buy-Side Is Done, Guys. Then answer the question: Is there any room for innovation in real estate search? PS: I still think less is more.

Says Greg Fischer… agent search is the next frontier I’ve never really seen anything that leads me to believe a big percentage of people search for agents. People search for houses. Conversion from traffic to leads generally happens on the listing detail page — when buyers…

You may have read the recent post on Inman (subscription wall) about bot vs broker when sourcing homes for a buyer to tour. It says, in an unscientific test, the bot can more accurately recommend the properties buyers will like viewing in person. I wrote a…

I spoke with Krishna from TLC Engine (True Lifestyle Cost) this morning, and he showed me Emerald Real Estate in Minnesota as a demo site for their lifestyle search technology. I like the idea of searching based on the actual monthly lifestyle cost of a specific home….