Some gems amid a rough week

Davison and I were in Orange County Monday, San Francisco Tuesday and head to Dallas later this morning. I’ve been hit with food poisoning and Marc is still without ID or credit cards since losing his wallet in Chicago last week, which makes air travel loads of fun.

So I hope you’ll forgive the light posting!

Anyway … there were two things that hit my inbox over the past few days that are worth noting.

#1

Technology consultant John Rowles pinged me to tout his IDX solution, which pairs Google’s search appliance with a standard listings feed. His intention – which I wholeheartedly support — is to simplify IDX by delivering a solution that looks and feels like a Google search. You can see it in action here. This from his email:

• We are currently seeing a 35% visitor repeat rate and an average time on site of 12 minutes (bounce filtered — we filter out 1 page view visits and visits <30 seconds. That is SOP in eCommerce).

• Google the address of one of our listings and, if the agent has held up their end and provided content, we are usually #1, Page 1.
• Google a more general term, and we are creeping up Page 1. Like, “stamford ct mls” #1, “new haven ct real estate” #2 , and “newport ri real estate” #5, etc.
• In addition to the usual analytics, we can also track the keywords people use internally on our site, which is a treasure trove of actionable intel if you are a metrics wonk like me.

Is there something here? Perhaps. I need to think about it more with a clearer head. I am interested in your thoughts.

#2

Vladimir Bosanac, Publisher of The Registry, a SF Bay Area real estate publication, shot me a link to Wheelhouse, an investment real estate brokerage that’s doing some pretty cool stuff, including candid reviews of every building on the market in their area.

 
I know: Redfin did this on the residential side and got smacked down by the MLS in its top market. So proceed with caution.

But the larger takeaway here is that this company, which claims that it is “Trustworthy” in bold type on its homepage, actually does something to substantiate that claim.

You don’t see that much in residential real estate real estate brokerage. Yet.

— Brian Boero