Reading Seth Siegler’s “A Real Estate Groupon?” post got me thinking this morning. Seth talks about trying to figure out how to use Groupon to sell real estate. I’m thinking along similar lines. However, I don’t think the opportunity is to use the existing Groupon service to sell real estate; I think the opportunity is for someone to build a “Groupon for the real estate vertical” and use it to market to home buyers in a way they haven’t been engaged before, and of course to drive warm buyer leads to agents in the process. The service could likely be more successful if broader in scope to be targeted at home owners rather than specifically buyers. This would allow the service to offer home improvement items like a new pressure washer or special on outdoor latex paint, home decor items such as rugs and linens, special promotions for services such as Dish Network, in addition to actual listings. The right approach might be a daily special, to go along with a weekly special (such as $3,000 off list price, or all furniture included) on a particular listing in each neighborhood, ZIP, or city you sign up for.

I all but guarantee that a weekly or daily listing into the inbox of home buyers could drive leads. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if a Zillow or Trulia is already thinking about building this, particularly since they already have large groups of buyers to upsell such a service to.

What do you think? Anyone up for building a “Groupon for Real Estate”? Would you subscribe to the service if it existed in your area? And, if you think this is a terrible idea — tell me that too. I can take it.