40+ Real Estate Web 2.0 Websites, Applications, and Communities

January 19th, 2008

The following is a list of 40+ online web 2.0 websites, applications, and communities, some that are in beta (or even alpha) development stages. If you know if one we missed, by all means tell us, this should be an organic, ever growing list.

Home Values

Zillow

It allows anyone to find rough estimates of the valuation of their home by searching comparable properties. While values are not always accurate, the site continues to get it better.

RealEstate ABC

Beta property valuation tool competing directly with Zillow. It uses Google Maps in its technology mashup and allows you to do cool things like adjust values of properties given certain market conditions.

Cyberhomes

Valuations give you access to most of the same information that real estate professionals use to evaluate homes. Whether you own your place, are thinking of buying, or even just looking around, you can explore data ranging from property facts, value estimates, and a variety of important indicators of local and national changes in the housing market.

eppraisal

Free service that allows anyone to quickly and easily take the first step to buying, selling, or refinancing a home by providing instant access to property valuations, real estate professionals and additional services. eppraisal pulls together public record data from over 70 million homes to quickly and easily give you an estimated value range.

Listings

Trulia

Scrapes real estate sites to find listings and brings it all together in a clean, well designed site. Using Google maps and RSS feeds, the site seems to have taken the lead in the future of online property listings.

Smarter Agent

GPS real estate searches from your cell phone

HousingMaps

Craigslists – Google Maps mashup to find properties for rent or for sale in your area. The interface is deceivingly simple; dive in and discover how content-rich HousingMaps really is.

Retrove

Retrove is a national vertical real estate search engine that allows you to search all types of real estate listings such as MLS listings, FSBO, foreclosures, classifieds and other types of property listings across the nation. Retrove provide you real estate search results that take you directly to the real estate listing source.

City Cribs

Buy, Rent or Sell US Apartments and Homes. A comprehensive real estate marketplace featuring millions of listings.

ZoomF

Property search engine Google maps mashup,aggregating listings from many online sources and making them easily searchable with a GoogleMap-based visual interface.

Prop Smart

Next-generation, independent real estate search engine. We crawl and index millions of homes for sale and other properties, then organize and display them on a slick Google Map interface.

Roost

Roost offers parallel services - a search for consumers and a new platform for Realtors. Unlike other site, they dedicate their time and resources to being a great search engine and having up to the minute data for a dozen or so markets, with more being added daily.

Google, Craigslist, Oodle

Neighborhood

WalkScore

Help homebuyers, renters, and real estate agents find houses and apartments in great neighborhoods. Walk Score shows you a map of what’s nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property.

YourStreet

Community of homeowners, buyers and renters sharing inside knowledge about their local neighborhoods. Discover a new neighborhood or share knowledge about your own. Track local real estate conditions in your area - what’s selling and what’s not. Connect with neighbors across the country and find out what a neighborhood is really like.

Rotten Neighbor

The first real estate search engine of its kind allowing you to rate and review good and bad neighbors before and after you move so you can make a smart real estate decision.

Home Thinking

Online service that helps home owners choose the most remarkable neighborhood real estate agents to sell their house.

Hubbuzz

Apartment search by neighborhood website. In addition to finding apartments, users can search neighborhood profiles, photos, interactive maps and user generated blogs and events. Hubbuzz is an apartment site that incorporates extensive neighborhood information and user generated blogs and comments from anyone in the community.

Terabitz

Comprehensive and customizable real estate Web site that fundamentally changes the online real estate industry by helping consumers make smart decisions before, during, and after the property transaction in ways never before possible. We, at Terabitz, realize that every home exploration is unique.

Estately (Washington State Only) - Beta

Created with the belief that home buyers need context when they’re looking for a home. At Estately you can learn about the surrounding area, the nearby shops, the character of the neighborhood and the style, size and price of a property.

Blockhunter

New way of finding a place to live. If you want to move, you can let people in the area know you’re looking. If you want to sell or let a place, you can find interested people quickly. No hassle, no obligation, no estate agents.

House America

Real estate information service that gives those of us who are not real estate professionals independent access to actual unfiltered information that is relevant to what is often our most valuable investment—our home—or any other real estate.

Agents

Agent Scoreboard (Some States)

Search for agents in your local area and read reviews and comments posted by real people that have used their services.

Incredible Agents

Real estate agent review service that helps home buyers and sellers find an Incredible Agent who can assist them in their real estate transactions.

Agent Match

Free service to consumers that enables you to search for real estate agents using meaningful criteria including: commission, location, sales history, services offered, experience level, and the estimated value of the home you are selling or buying.

Marketing

VFlyer

Classified ad creation, management and submission platform that enables online sellers to quickly and easily create attractive classified ads or “virtual flyers” that can be posted on dozens of leading online marketplaces in a few simple clicks.

Postlets

Free template and photo hosting for craigslist classifieds

WellcomeMat

Video network that connects you with people and resources to most effectively market real estate, neighborhoods, cities, events and local businesses.

Real Estate Shows

Use your digital photos to create stunning Internet Shows in less than 5 minutes! They will look and feel like TV commercials!

HomePerks

Online rewards system that enables real estate sellers and professionals to give Buyers and other users rewards.

Info

HotPads

Supply housing shoppers with the info they need to make sound financial decisions about whether to buy or rent.

Foreclosure Radar (California Only)

Only place where you’ll find complete up-to-date information on every foreclosure opportunity available in California, including exclusive daily updates on every auction.

DIY (always good to know the competition, right?)

Redfin

Industry’s first online brokerage for residential real estate.

ChoiceA

Users are encouraged to list their property for sale for free. Buyer’s can browse listings with new technologies including drag-n-drop favorites, endless scroll searches and can view properties using data, pictures or maps.

BlueRoof

Way to buy and sell a home—bringing together buyers and sellers in one place, and connecting all the resources you need to buy or sell your home.

RealEstate Communities

Active Rain

Free Online community for real estate professionals designed to help them promote and grow their business.

BiggerPockets

Real Estate Social Networking site out there. With a focus on networking, dealmaking, and education, the site brings a professional approach to the world of real estate for both the consumer and professionals.

Zolve

Online real estate referral network, a business exchange that connects real estate practitioners and service providers across the country and around the globe.

Just Plain Cool Sites

Realius

Fantasy Real Estate

iiPorperty

Manage your properties with software that lets you track rents, bills, advertisements and invoicing.

Tools of the Times - Part I

January 19th, 2008

Spokeo

When I stumbled upon this site and looked at the tool for a minute or two, I thought, “hey this could be interesting”. After I entered my email and fed it my contact list of 450 people, I went from interested, to amazed, to nervous, all in about 3 minutes. I think for what the tool was designed to do, it works well, and was nice to see people I never even thought to track down in mySpace or Facebook. It also felt a bit like I was intruding, since most of these people post to site not ever thinking that a tool like this would come along.

So whats the tool, and what does it do? You feed it a list of email addresses and it goes and searches 22 sites (everything from flickr, picasa, myspace, to your wish list at amazon.com) and brings you a list of your “friends” (or anyone you have an email address for) and their pictures, blog posts, twitter thoughts, and products they hope to soon buy.

The first thing I thought, is oh boy, I hope that at some point I didn’t add anything embarrassing to my wish-list on amazon. It was a brutal reminder that everything you post on-line sticks around for a very long time and can and will be found, even if you don’t intend it to. Don’t get me wrong, this is a amazing little tool they have going one here. It will consolidate my social networking for my business in ways I couldn’t have imagined just yesterday. You can enter yourself and track all of the places you network in one central hub.

I guess this is the way we are trending with the web. Web 1.0 connected information, web 2.0 connects people. Give it a shot and let me know your feeling on this tool and implication on privacy and your social networking plan.

http://www.spokeo.com

.inspiring.estates.

January 12th, 2008

.inspiring.estates. is a content management system (CMS) geared specifically to Real Estate agents, that allows you to manage properties on your website in an easy and effective way. This powerful combination enables you to run a real estate website and use the most user friendly open source Web Content Management System (CMS) available today - Joomla CMS!
Our products are developed based on several case studies and feedbacks from our users. Now you can list and manage your real estate properties easily using .inspiring.estates.

  • Easily Manage Properties and Site Content
  • Publish and Showcase Properties at the Click of a Button
  • Attach an Unlimited Number of Photos per Property
  • Advanced On-Site Search Engine
  • Search Engine Optimized
  • Recommend Property to Friend Feature
  • Company and Agent Information
  • Allows Individual Agent Login and Listings
  • Featured Property Module
  • Print Property Details
  • Save Property Info as PDF

These are several reasons you can be assured that choosing our .inspiring.estates. is the right investment for your company. Many realtors interested in .inspiring.estates. also love our .inspiring.mail. program, an email managment system.

Increase Online Productivity with iGoogle

December 1st, 2007

iGoogle is a customizable homepage allowing users with a google account (get one here) to add Google Gadgets and RSS Feeds to your homepage. There are over 25,000 gadgets available and there is the ability to create your own from a template. We have sifted through thousands of gadgets to bring the top ten gadgets that increase your ability to get work done on the web, since there are a million out there that hinder it.

1. Google Analytics - If you have a website or blog you need to track user statistics. GA also allows for integration with Google AdWords. This module will Display Google Analytic Stats on your homepage. Provides access to all profiles created in your account. Allows user to set refresh interval for real time updates.

2. Timesheet Recorder - Freelancers, contractors, or even one of your employee may need an easy way to keep track of their time. Here it is.

3. Google Services - If you’re like me and use wmany different Google services, add their gadgets to your iGoogle homepage: Gmail, Google Reader, GCal, Google Docs, Googe Talk.

4. Compound Gadget - Allows you to combine several gadgets into a tabbed interface, allowing out clean up your page a bit after you add all the new gadgets mentioned here.

5. Google Map Search - Find places with Google Maps without leaving your homepage. Ajax Based, which means Coolness. Find restaurants to wine and dine clients, or get direction to your next meeting.

6. Document to PDF - If you send invoices or documents often, this will allow conversion to the standardized pdf format.

7. Microsoft Outlook - If you use Outlook, put your inbox and calendar on iGoogle.

8. Stickies - Movable, resizable, dockable post it notes. Finally remove those yellow stickies from all over your office…

9. Pandora Radio Gadget - Everyone needs some inspiration while working, and what better way then listening to some tunes from the internet’s coolest radio - since it only plays songs you like (how? find out more about Pandora here)

10. Create Your Own - if you are inspired like us, or just can find what you need, Google created a wizard allowing you to create your own, using seven templates, including ones for photos, a countdown, lists, etc.

35+ Small Business Online Resources - Inspiring Solutions for an Online World

November 1st, 2007

Google Everything - AdWords, Analytics, Apps, Base, Calender, Code, Gmail, Local, Maps, Webmaster Tools

SpeedTest - Self explainitory, but this one gve as great interface and you can save results from session to session.

Yelp - Review and talk about what’s great (and not so great) in your area (restaurants, dentists, hairstylists, and anything local)

ZapReader - Web based speed reading program. Grain of salt alert: the site says you can experience a 300% increase in reading speed, without any loss in comprehension

YouSendIt: Have you ever had to clean out your inbox just so you’d have room to send out an email? YouSendIt puts and end to that trouble by sending files up to 2GB to your clients.

Basecamp: Basecamp offers a way to improve project communication. Use it to keep your teammates and clients informed about what’s going on with your projects.

Lulu: Lulu gives fledgling writers an easy way to get published. Each product is printed as it’s ordered, so you don’t have to build an expensive inventory.

PayPal: Give your clients a way to pay without sharing their financial information by using PayPal.

Campfire: Campfire is a web-based chat tool that’s ideal for online meetings with clients or coworkers.

LogMeIn: Don’t let your business suffer because you can’t take your computer on the road. Use LogMeIn to get access to your computer’s desktop anywhere

LinkedIn: LinkedIn offers online networking at its best. Find opportunities and contacts based on your work and the people you already know.

Craigslist: Craigslist is an invaluable tool for any freelancer. Find clients, sell your work, buy supplies, network and more using Craigslist.

l8r: If you’re working at 2AM but prefer that your client thinks you keep normal hours, you can use l8r to delay sending messages until a specified time. You can also use it to schedule emails that you know you’ll send, like reminders.

Pinger: Forgot to send an email? Don’t worry, you can send an audio email message to your recipient instead using Pinger.

Yugma - Free online collaboration with real-time desktop sharing, virtual meetings and more.

Plaxo - Plaxo offers toolbars for major email clients and web browsers (at least in Beta release) to keep your address book updated across all the applications that you use.

vflyer - Create a standardized classified ad that can be used online or in print.

GrandCentral - One phone number that will ring all of your phone lines and organize all of your voicemail into one mailbox.

Website Grader - How good at you at optimizing your website for Search Engines?

Lipsum Generator - Generate Latin filler text for mock-ups and story boarding websites

stock.xchng: Add photos to your writing or web design at low or no cost. stock.xchng provides tons of stock photos, many of them royalty-free.

MorgueFile: MorgueFile’s high resolution photos are has-beens in the stock photography world, but that doesn’t mean they won’t do a great job spicing up your work.

Designers Toolbox: Get set up with all the legal forms your design business may need with Designers Toolbox

Nolo: If you’ve got a legal question about your business, head to Nolo. Experts there offer legal advice for independent contractors and consultants.

Prosper: Using Prosper’s people-to-people lending website, you can borrow money for business expenses from real people. If you have extra cash, use Prosper to earn interest by lending to others.

MiddlePost Docs - Electronic signature services that allow you to get legally binding electronic signatures on your contracts.

IconnectE - Network with start-ups, small business owners, entrepreneurs, and others to create more business opportunities for yourself.

88 Miles - Unobtrusive time tracking that allows you to punch in and out of projects as you’re working, and includes on-screen timers that show you how much time you’ve clocked.

For Webdesigners - 295 helpful links for webdesigners

Deal Time - The Best (and Cheapest) Tech Gear

July 7th, 2007

Deal Dump - One Page, All the Best Deals. Start everyday with a visit here.

Stealzone - Deal Dump’s better looking yet not quite as cool cousin.



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