Baron Briefs

“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.

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:

…pretty good if you ask me. This morning, I searched for homes with asking prices between $250,000 and $500,000 in 13 metro areas and compared the size of RealtyBaron’s RealSearchâ„¢ results with two real estate search leaders, Trulia and Propsmart. The results surprised me:

Atlanta	1,462	1,496	2,693
Boston	242	498	1,240
Chicago	2,420	10,023	9,199
Dallas	744	332	1,950
Denver	411	1,358	1,186
Vegas	5,050	3,264	3,336
L.A.	369	2,686	4,023
Miami	1,950	8,770	10,375
Phoenix	2,128	6,802	4,063
Seattle	298	3,470	751
S.D.	1,038	3,238	5,519
S.F.	75	468	1,186
D.C.	603	720	2,374
**NOTE: 15% added to Trulia numbers to account for no FSBOs in results.

Was this a scientific comparison? No, because it doesn’t consider the quality of the listing data. For example, Trulia’s or Propsmart’s search algorithms may exclude listings from their index if the listing is missing data points A, B, and/or C. As a result, the total number of their results would be lower. Regardless, it was nice to visualize how RealtyBaron’s RealSearchâ„¢ sizes up against the incumbents.

I launched our first integration with Zillow early this morning. Not bad considering the API has only been available for one week. (Am I the first? Surely someone from Zillow can confirm it in the comments if true.)

Like a good programmer should, I designed the integeration separate from the RealtyBaron.com website. As a result, anyone who is using Java as their web platform can use the same software code I used to integrate. The project’s home can be found at http://code.realtybaron.com/docs/zillow-api

The source is not yet available and the documentation was hurried. Drop me an email if you have questions, comments, or need help using the toolkit: marc@realtybaron.com

I received an invitation to join the Zillow API Network on Monday as an “Alpha” tester, but didn’t get a chance to begin work on anything until yesterday. Since then, I’ve assembled a small “toolkit” using nothing but the finest in Java open source to make integrating Zillow’s API easier. After getting past two roadblocks late this afternoon, I was able to successfully request my home’s property details and Zestimate via Zillow’s API. Woohoo! Anyone else working on integration with Zillow’s API?

I received an email this morning from Zillow Business Development saying the API does not currently include the data I was most excited about when it was announced:

At some point, it is very likely that the API will be able to pull [lot size, square feet, number of bedrooms, bath, etc], but we have not currently developed this functionality.

Bummer.

UPDATE:  False alarm.  Greg from Zillow set me straight in the comments.  Thanks, Greg!

BloodhoundBlog questions the strategy of allowing other websites to plug into the Web services of Zillow and Trulia:

How the hell are either of these two quivering little firms going to make money on this? “Advertising!” they shout in unison, but the advertising is on their home pages, where these APIs aren’t. Each one has a little click-back button to take self-selected volunteers back to the home planet. But if I’m getting the milk for free at LargelyUnobjectionableAtlantaHomes.com, why the heck would I go to the dairy?

My initial thought on why each would do this: By opening up Zestimates and Zindices to the masses, Zillow is following in the foot steps of major players like Amazon and Google…build an API, let others innovate off the technology, and then acquire the best of breed.  Remember, they recently picked up an extra $25 million to “broaden their product offering”.  As far as TruliaMap, it’s likely an attempt to win over agents and brokers who haven’t warmed up to the idea of their website being crawled and scraped. Now, they get a cool widget for their website and Trulia gets access to more listings.

Seen as the big, bad wolf of the real estate industry by some, Zillow just announced they’ll be opening their services in the fall in the form of an application programming interface (API). Basically, it means websites like RealtyBaron.com can ask Zillow.com…programmatically speaking…for things like Zestimates, Zindices, and specs on a home such as square footage, number of beds and baths. This is great news for small operations (i.e. unfunded) like ours. Kudos, Zillow.