Last week, I drove up to Pasadena, Ca, to attend my first RE BarCamp.  For those of you who don’t know, RE BarCamp is a “FREE Social Media Marketing event based on BarCamp.org principals.“  Basically, people from the RE community(Realtors, vendors, developers, etc) attend these camps and learn about new products and services that are related to real estate.  This particular camp focused on Social Media – Twitter, LinkedIn, video blogging, SEO tips, etc.

Since it was my first BarCamp, I can’t compare it to anything else, but it was pretty interesting.  I think my favorite part about the trip, was how intimate it was.  No, not like that, but in the sense that I was able to meet with and talk to people like Robert Luna(Diverse Solutions), Greg Robertson(Dwellicious), Michael Simonsen(Altos), Jason Benesch(Listing Press) and of course, Drew Meyers of Zillow, Carnival of Real Estate and GeekEstate (Drew, did I miss anything?).  It was cool getting to ask the speakers(the ones who came up with the products) questions and hearing about their product/services first hand.

I didn’t get to attend as many “classes” as I wanted to, but here are some of the ones I thought were pretty insightful/useful.

1. Dwellicious – This service is a simple way for consumers to bookmark properties during their house hunts.  Users can quickly and easily install the application to their browser’s toolbar and it’s ready to go.  Now when a home buyer is looking on Realtor.com, Trulia, etc, and they see a home they like, they can simply click a button and save it to their FREE Dwellicious account.

This way they can store all the homes they come across in one simple account.  Dwellicious also makes it easy to share their favorite homes with friends and family, by simply forwarding them their account info(ex. http://dwellicious.com/dennyoh).  There are no passwords, login pages, or anything else – you just send them your link.

With that said, no one can change your saved homes, unless you give them your login info.  And, if you don’t want anyone to be able to see your houses, you can make your profile private.  The nice thing about Dwellicious, is that now I can have my clients store all their “favorites” in one easily accessible site.  So when a buyer says, “yeah I like this one condo that was $550,000 and had two bedrooms, but I don’t know the address or MLS#,” I can just go to their Dwellicious account and see what they’re talking about.

Typically I create a custom page for my clients, where they can save the houses they like(which I can access), but we all know that buyers are looking all over the internet for houses.  They think they can find something on Realtor.com that I can’t.  This is why Dwellicious is nice.

2. Altos – In today’s market, buyers and sellers need some convincing.  I’m not talking about pushing them to buy when they shouldn’t, but I am talking about providing them with accurate and relevant information so they can make the best decisions.  Altos provides market info for agents to advise their clients.  They can tell you which price points are moving quickly, where the median home prices are, how long market times are, or anything else you want to know.

As they said at the RE BarCamp, people who are looking to buy or sell are interested in three things: What’s the Real Estate market doing, What’s for Sale and How Much is my Home Worth?  With the information that Altos provides, you, the Realtor, can use actual data to inform your client of what’s going on.

If they’re looking to buy a $300K home, do they need to act fast?  What’s the average market time at that price point?  Are homes in the million dollar range going up, or down?  Altos allows you to educate and counsel your clients so that they can understand what’s going on in the market and make educated decisions.  Being able to speak to your clients intelligently about your market is key and Altos is there to help you.

3. Listing Press – Listing Press was by far the most exciting application that I learned about at the RE BarCamp.  In a nutshell, Listing Press is a, rather the, new way to search for homes.  What sets Listing Press apart from any other IDX service I’ve seen, is that it doesn’t use an iframe.  Instead of having your IDX provider redirect the MLS information to your blog, Listing Press actually hosts the MLS on your site.  So what?  Well by doing so, your site will now contain all the content and keywords that home buyers are searching for.  Imagine how much your SEO would improve!

Another cool thing about it is that it’s an open source WordPress application.  You can make it look however you want and you can change its functionality.  The creator of Listing Press, Jason Benesch, is from the Real Estate Tomato, so you know what kind of product you’re getting.

I’ve seen Listing Press in action(just in beta form) and I can’t wait to get it going on my site.  For anyone who’s looking to improve their SEO, this is a no brainer.

All in all, my first RE BarCamp was pretty cool.  I met Drew and a bunch of other people of the RE blogosphere and I learned about some cool now(at least to me) products.  And Drew, FYI, you’re a lot taller and thinner than I’d imagined.  I’m not sure why I thought you were short and fat, but you proved me wrong.  Oh and as far as I could tell, the only meaning to “bar” in RE BarCamp, is that everyone drinks at these things – it was awesome.

ps – I think the next one is in Portland if you’re interested.