Love them or hate them, property search sites like Zillow® have set the bar very high in terms of the information that is made available to the consumer. I choose Zillow because they have hung their hat on an Automated Valuation Model (AVM) that they call the Zestimate.
Real Estate brokers have built their websites off of IDX data. That started to change with the launch of ZipRealty and Redfin, which display web pages for every parcel in America. In this way, they are like the portals.
Recently, websites like Howard Hanna have begun to do the same. Joining them is Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach, REALTORS®. Their key feature is that every property has information to satisfy the consumer, and it helps with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) too. Using public records data, Fox and Roach has caught the portals. But there is more!
Fox and Roach pushes past the portals with some key features about off market properties. They call it the Home Valuation System™. Rather than a simple of display of the Zestimate, which is fraught with its issues of accuracies, Fox and Roach includes three AVMs. You gotta check this out:
- Visit http://www.foxroach.com
- Select the What Is Your Home Worth Tab
- Search 231 Chamoun (I intentionally did not complete the address because I want you to experience the smart search auto-fill)
The first feature to look at is in the header. The application has adopted the header from the broker – full branding. There is a statement that confirms the property address and property facts along with a great lead generation tool to “subscribe to this property.”
The second great feature is not one, but three valuations are included in the Home Valuation System™. I really like the inclusion of the Zestimate here because it discourages the consumer from going to Zillow to look it up. I also really like that the consumer sees the value ranges across multiple AVMs. It shows that algorithms do not price and sell homes. They are value range instruments that may be accurate or not accurate. I also like the use of the Google street view to show property images.
Here we see that the range can be pretty significant, from $871,000 to a high of $967,882. Both the RPR™ and the Zestimate are free. Fox and Roach is a subscriber to the Collateral Analytics service. Other services are also available from sources like CoreLogic. The Home Valuation System™ really goes over the top of Zillow by offering three valuations with support to call an agent.
Further extending the application, Fox and Roach creates transparency as to the number of buyers available for this property. This is outstanding, and a key reason to list with Fox and Roach. When most real estate agents are telling sellers how they will market the property to attract buyers, Fox and Roach will be telling sellers how many buyers they already have for their home.
This information is pulled together from a number of sources containing buyside data, such as the brokers registered users who have saved searches, Open House signups, inquiries, showing data from ShowingTime and the local MLS. The buyside service aggregates all of the company’s buyside data and makes them available across the company. Agents cannot see the identity of another agent’s buyer, but they see what the buyers are looking for.
Incidentally, the service is not only available to the broker’s site, but in true Fox and Roach form, they make it available to the agents’ sites so they too can generate seller leads and show off their access to real-time buyside data!
Way to raise the bar Fox and Roach!
Apparently good applications get adopted quickly. Chuck Williams at Buyside sent in a few other links to other companies.
GetBuyside.com
