Last week LotandHome.com launched a new listing site focused on new homes and lots, but with a twist. Anyone can register with the site and get a “Rebate Voucher.” Bring the voucher to the builder and get a “cash back equaling 1% of the purchase price”. Doesn’t sound like a bad idea (who doesn’t like $1k coupons ).
From the Press Release:
“Completely non-competitive LotandHome offers benefits to the buyer, the homebuilder and the real estate agent. Homes sold through LotandHome.com carry a three percent commission from the participating builders. The new homebuyer receives a 1% cash rebate, 1% goes into national advertising for the website and 1% is allocated toward operational expenses and profits.”

A new real estate listing site called BeatYouThere.com launched yesterday (inman) and it’s adding a social twist. BeatYouThere users can search for other users (buyers, sellers, investors, etc), rate other users, comment on properties (and users), and connect with friends. It’s a novel idea, however while navigating the site I found some of the social aspects/comments/etc buried and the other social features haven’t officially launched yet (marked coming soon).

Another StreetView Launch:
Today, RealEstate.com launches property searches with integrated StreetView (from Inman).

Choices:
If you are developing a Real Estate 2.0 site then you have a hard choice ahead. Do you integrate Google’s StreetView or Microsoft’s Birds EyeView? Hey, at least we have choices.

Product Launches:
Last week, Trulia was the first to announced the integration of Google’s Street View (FOREM). Today, DotHomes also announces the integration of Google’s Street View (see below).

“DotHomes.com (DotHomes), the real estate search engine, today announced that it has implemented Google’s Street View to its US listings. This application adds to the already extensive list of real estate search functions including videos, maps, and aerial views, which home buyers can use to facilitate their real estate search. The “Street” button can be found below each individual property listing alongside other search functions such as Save, Add Video, Aerial and Map.” -Release

Question: What are you guys doing? We haven’t heard much from eppraisal/realtythoughts in a while.

Answer: Other than visiting real estate Agents across the U.S., we have been working on tweaking our technology and getting ready for the launch of hoodeo (www.hoodeo.com).

Question: Hold up, what’s hoodeo?

Answer: Right now, I can’t say much other than it uses the eppraisal engine in a very unique way. It is surprisingly simple and some would call it “revolutionary”.

Note, the splash page is up and we will be announcing updates over the next few weeks.

This past weekend Quicken launched Quizzle.com as “a place that gives you simple understanding of your home and money.” Basically, they have incorporated your credit score from Experian, a custom home value estimate, mortgage info, and other tools into a web 2.0 style interface.

However, Quizzle goes a bit further and calculates an overall “Quizzle Score”, which represents how well you are doing financially. It seems like an interesting concept, but the signup process is a little too much for me.

There are quite a few new real estate listing sites popping up; it seems like this year is becoming the year of the listings. And it’s an all out race to get the most listings and the most visitors.

There are sites that:
-get listings from broker feeds
-use spiders to crawl listing sites
-invite consumers/realtors to post listings
-use IDX to syndicate listings
-use some combination of the above

It has reached a point where the general search experience is becoming eerily similar. This considered, I was surprised when I got an email about the upcoming today’s U.S launch of DotHomes (www.dothomes.com). While the site is very popular in foreign countries (e.g. South Africa, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), I was a bit skeptical about the launch of another listing engine in the U.S.

So, I talked to Douglas de Jager (co-founder of dothomes) to see what’s unique/different about dothomes’ market approach. During the call he demonstrated dothome’s vertical search engine and querying interface. And I must say that I was very impressed with the ease of use and the powerful search functionality.

On other sites, you can search listings by city and state and filter the results using pre-configured criteria (i.e. price, bed rooms, etc). However, dothomes allows for intelligent searches that includes keywords and keyword phrases. For example, you can do a search for “Ocean view in miami” or find homes near “Microsoft Redmond.” You can even apply price filters directly from the search box. Try this search: “open house in houston for 250k to 2m”

Ohh and dothomes has indexed and launches today with over 1 million listings.

I have been swamped the last few weeks and haven’t had the time to look into new Real Estate companies. However, I wanted to take a moment to congratulate Erik Hersman on his efforts for Africa and feature a product that is not in the real estate space.

Last week, Erik launched a new map based mashup called Ushahidi, that is designed to track the current violence in Kenya. Mashable has a great write up on Erik and Ushahidi at:
http://mashable.com/2008/01/11/kenyas-web-20-necessity-and-invention/

I maybe late on this, but have you seen the new Reply.com? The site is gearing up for a complete rebrand and dropping their custom valuation model. The new site pulls data from cyberhomes and zillow for home values and oodle for property listings.

“ConnectWithLife.com, a division of Reply! Inc., is the portal for consumers who want to get smart about important life-stage decisions, such as buying or selling a home, purchasing a car, and more. ConnectWithLife.com provides consumers with easy access to the very latest tools, reviews, reports and information they need to make big real estate and automobile decisions easier, and connects them with local service providers in neighborhoods across America who can assist them in completing the transaction. We have developed a unique national network of more than 17,000 qualified service providers to help consumers meet their real estate, automotive, and financial needs.”

Today, new real estate social networking site iwantanoffer.com officially launches to the public. The site launches complete with the ability to add friends, create a public profile, upload a walkthrough video, schedule a visit, showcase testimonials, and make an offer! The site surprisingly has a lot of features and I am sure that I am only scratching the surface.

The application doesn’t offer all of this for free. You can register for free, but there is a fee to list properties. I question the fee structure (for consumers); especially with the current list of free sites out there to market properties. But, it doesn’t hurt to actually launch with a business model.

Overall, I think the site has a lot of potential and is definitely worth checking out.