Baron Briefs

Yahoo! Real Estate added two new online appraisal sources—Reply! and eppraisal.com—to their home value section this week. They join Zillow to form a home value estimates “trifecta” for consumers.

In my opinion, this is a big win for eppraisal.com. Just recently, eppraisal.com moved into the top 100 of real estate sites on the web according to Hitwise. Now, they will share “shelf space” with two competitors who each have millions in VC funding. Congratulations to Erik Hersman and his team over at Realty Thoughts on yet another victory.

It’s not uncommon for visitors to arrive at RealtyBaron.com after asking a search engine, “Are real estate fees negotiable?”. Notice the query is not “how” to negotiate, but rather “if” negotiation of a Realtor’s price is allowed.

That very question coupled with Redfin’s appearance on 60 Minutes has me thinking about upcoming listing appointments this summer. With 13 million viewers, 60 Minutes may have awakened the U.S. consumer—many who had previously assumed real estate fees where non-negotiable—and inspired them to bargin with Realtors while huddled around a listing presentation.

Consumers motivated to haggle (i.e. downward pressure on Realtor fees) combined with a weakening real estate market that requires more time and money from Realtors to market listings (i.e. upward pressure on Realtor fees) makes for a very, very long summer for Realtors.

“The average agent processes eight deals a year. We have an agent that can do that every week,” Kelman explains.

“Are you spinning me?” Stahl asks.

“I mean, seriously,” Kelman replies.

I reviewed the segment again this morning. I believe the key word Glenn used was “can”…. as in Redfin has an agent who can close eight deals per week if market conditions allow. If Redfin did have an agent who was closing eight deals per week, it seems Glenn would have said, “We have an agent who is doing that every week”. However, the impression of eight deals per week is certainly made. But it’s like a coach saying “we have a running back who can rush for 100 yards per game each week”. They’re both statements that speak of potential. In my opinion, Glenn was speaking to Redfin’s technological and organizational advantage over the average “traditional” agent rather than current performance.

Furthermore, “I mean, seriously” doesn’t seem like a confident response to the question, “Are you spinning me?”. I would expect “No”, “Absolutely Not”, or “Not spinning at all”.

In any event, I invite Redfin’s super-agent to publish his or her MyAgentRankâ„¢ badge on a website or weblog and allow their sales data to be vetted by the public.

vFlyer has assembled an excellent view of Real Estate 2.0. Twenty-six “representative” companies are spread out over thirteen different categories. Zillow tops everyone with four category appearances while Trulia and ActiveRain tie for second with three.

vFlyer was kind enough to include RealtyBaron in the “Reviews” category along with Homethinking and IncredibleAgent.

In a matter of hours today, I lost $10 to Zillow with nothing to show for it. I used the same ad copy that costs me $1.27 per conversion on Google. I guess visitors were too busy asking about the paint job on Joe’s house to glance at the ads. My dismal results below:

UPDATE: Zillow’s David G. emailed last night. His comments:

Your ad should not have served that rapidly. We’re working on it and I’ll get back to you with an update and a solution as soon as we figure out what’s up.

David

Note to bootstrappers: don’t sit on a new feature announcement too long or someone with much better funding will grab headlines with a similar feature.

So, rather than appearing as a quick and nimble entrepreneur, I get to appear as an “us too” and prematurely announce our new answer service, RealAnswers(TM), with a side-by-side comparison to Zillow’s new Home Q&A. That’s right. RealtyBaron quietly launched an answer service alongside our home search, RealSearch(TM), way back on January 5th. The purpose is to—you guessed it—answer questions about homes.

Here’s how it compares to Zillow’s new Home Q&A:

Way back in 2004, I launched a free ad generator to help homeowners publish their FSBO listing to Craigslist. The press release read “add color, stylish formatting, and unlimited image hosting for real estate ads on Craigslist.” As it turned out, the tool was used almost exclusively by real estate agents. Unfortunately, I yanked it from the site in late 2005 when RealtyBaron.com underwent a major re-design.

Since then, RealtyBaron’s mission has become clear: “help affiliated real estate agents get to the closing table as much and as quickly as possible”. In other words, if an agent is signed up with RealtyBaron, I want to help that agent close as many deals as possible because it only strengthens our platform to have closers associated with us.

As a result of this mission clarity, I re-launched the ad generator yesterday. Like the old version, the new ad generator automagically provides “color, stylish formatting, and unlimited image hosting”. The new version, however, does not require the agent to copy/paste any code. In other words, the tool allows for seamless ad creation and publishing to Craigslist. Other online classified sites such as Backpage and LiveDeal are in the pipeline.

Here’s an example ad:

The magic appears to be gone from most real estate markets around the country. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still explore your real estate fantasies. Fantasy real estate games will be hitting the web in coming weeks. When Drew Meyers called for a virtual housing stock market game based on the Zillow API, both Realius and Realivent replied saying development is already under way.

The first battle ground for Realius and Realivent? The rights to the trademark Fantasy Real Estateâ„¢. (See the comments to see what I mean).

Trading of housing “binaries” returned to HedgeStreet today with three additional cities: Las Vegas, Denver and Washington, DC. That brings the total number of cities available for hedging and speculation to ten.

HedgeStreet’s website describes their hedging instruments as a way consumers can “speculate the degree to which their home will appreciate, or conversely, hedge against depreciation in the value of their home”. But I’d be willing to bet (no pun intended) they’d increase trading volume rapidly if they pitched to real estate agents as a way to hedge asking prices. For example, Joe Realtor could suggest a slightly higher asking price for a listing and place a bet against rising prices using HedgeStreet.

In any event, I think HedgeStreet is a cool idea and hope it gains more traction this year whomever the traders may be.

An anonymous real estate agent in the comments of Realty Thoughts’ blog pens three things you should avoid doing when selecting your real estate agent:

1. do not choose an agent because they have 8 on a widget on their blog.

2. do not choose an agent based on what strangers have said.

3. do not choose an agent based on how much commission they give back to you before you even enter into a transaction.

Put another way:

1. do not pay attention to the real estate agent’s website or blog. Especially avoid any type of message that summarizes the agent’s track record and differentiates him/her from the hundreds of other agents in your market.
2. do not speak with any of the agent’s previous clients about his/her performance during a transaction. Because they are strangers, their input has zero value.
3. do not negotiate with the agent regarding how much of your own money you get to retain before you hire him/her.