MLS Real Estate & Listings Blog

In today’s tough real estate market, brokers are looking for all sorts of ways to connect with consumers — especially online — and an interactive software company is offering technology that aims to do just that.

WebsiteAlive, a provider of live chat software, has created a version of its platform for real estate sites and is partnering with LuxuryRealEstate.com to offer it to real estate companies.  more…

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IHOUSE Web Solutions, a real estate technology company, has announced the launch of an online real estate game that allows users to guess at the sale price of for-sale homes. The game features photos and listing descriptions of actual for-sale homes, and awards points based on how a player’s guesses stack up against those of other players.  more…

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A longtime real estate investor is launching a set of subscription-based research tools that offer market statistics and forecasts at the national and micro level — down to the size of a Census block — as well as some free real estate tools at the company’s Web site.  more…

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EPerks, a company that launched last year that seeks to build a consumer audience and a pool of subscribing real estate professionals during a challenging time in the U.S. real estate market, combines real estate lead generation, referrals, rebates, agent profiles and reviews, and map-based searches into one portal.

The Pleasanton, Calif.-based company has already stirred up controversy and riled some industry professionals for a pay-per-review marketing campaign and legal threats against a blogger.  more…

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A statewide multiple listing service in Connecticut this week launched a public property-search site that features about 31,000 property listings.

CTreal.com features interactive mapping for home searches including a drawing tool called "Sherpa" that allows users to define a specific home-search area on its Google-based mapping platform.  more…

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Seattle-based Zillow.com scored its first partnership with a multiple listing service to feed for-sale property information to the national real estate site.

MLS Property Information Network, a privately owned MLS serving the New England area, will begin feeding listings to Zillow on a daily basis, the companies announced today.

MLS PIN has about 30,000 participants, and the organization manages a database of approximately 60,000 homes for sale.  more…

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Real estate franchise network Prudential Real Estate Affiliates Inc. and media company Homes & Land have announced agreements to distribute property listings information for display at third-party online real estate sites.

Homes & Land, which publishes several print magazines and operates the HomesAndLand.com Web site, which targets affluent home buyers, announced an agreement to feed all of the HomesAndLand.com property listings to real estate marketing and valuation site Zillow.com.  more…

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Just a few months after launching, HGTV’s FrontDoor.com is steadily adding big-brand partnerships with real estate brokerage heavy hitters.

The latest partnership announced today is with Prudential Real Estate Affiliates and will enable FrontDoor to display some 140,000 for-sale properties at its site, which already includes listings from Realogy and Leading Real Estate Companies of the World.  more…

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Online classified and community site craigslist is just a "messenger" and is not liable for discriminatory ads posted on the site by its users, a three-judge panel for the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals concluded in a ruling released Friday.

The judges upheld a November 2006 ruling by a U.S. District Court, which found that craigslist is considered an "interactive computer service" under federal law, and is not a publisher.  more…

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Consumers appreciate public property-search Web sites set up by multiple listing services, though such sites remain a divisive issue for industry professionals, according to a report released today by WAV Group, a real estate consulting company.

The "MLS Consumer Website Effectiveness Study" highlighted HAR.com, a popular real estate search site created by the Houston Association of Realtors, and gathered consumer and Realtor input about public MLS sites.  more…

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Realtor.com operator Move Inc. has hired Mike J. d’Almada-Remedios, former chief information officer at eBay and Shopping.com, to serve as the company’s chief technology officer.

The company did not previously have a CTO. D’Almada-Remedios will lead company strategic and tactical technology initiatives and will be responsible for the functionality, performance, scalability and reliability of the company’s tech platforms that support its Web sites and operations, the company announced.  more…

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California members of the Women’s Council of Realtors are participating in a new blog network that combines content at a single Web site from bloggers throughout the state.

The new portal, at WCRblogs.com, is the latest in a series of aggregated blog sites planned by Domus Consulting Group and Realivent, a company that offers tools for collaboration and marketing.  more…

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Allan Dalton, the former president of home-search site Realtor.com, has "voluntarily resigned" his position with a secretive venture at Move Inc. and will serve as a senior advisor to the company, according to company documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Move Inc. officials offered no comment about Dalton’s resignation.  more…

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New York appraisal and consulting firm Miller Samuel Inc., has parted from Radar Logic Inc., a real estate data and analytics company.

In September, both companies
announced that Radar Logic had reached an agreement to acquire Miller Samuel Inc. The companies had formed Radar Logic LLC in April to collaborate in research and consulting.  more…

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RE/MAX Real Estate’s remax.com Web site hopped into second place among the most popular real estate industry Web sites in February, up from its fourth-place ranking in January, Web metrics company Hitwise reported Friday, and real estate marketing company HomeGain bumped from second place in January to fifth place in February.  more…

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U.S. government prosecutors have asked a panel of judges to reconsider a ruling that dismisses the conviction and sentencing of the former CEO for Realtor.com operator Homestore Inc., now known as Move Inc.

Stuart Wolff, who served as CEO and chairman for Homestore from 1997 until his resignation during the company’s internal investigation in 2002, was convicted in June 2006 on 18 counts, including conspiracy to commit securities fraud, falsifying company books and records, lying to accountants and engaging in illegal insider trading.  more…

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A National Association of Realtors tech incubator company has acquired a commercial real estate data exchange company and plans to use its technology to launch a national commercial real estate listing and transaction platform in May.

Second Century Ventures LLC, a private equity fund established by the Realtors trade group supported by a membership dues increase this year, acquired Gig Harbor, Wash.-based ePropertyData.  more…

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The National Association of Realtors has a Code of Ethics that its 1.3 million members agree to abide by. The Association of Associates Representing Sellers (AARSTEAM), a new membership group created by the CEO of a New York real estate brokerage company, offers an alternative called the "Oath of Actions."

Realtor-affiliated for-sale property information databases are known as multiple listing services, or MLSs, and millions of Realtor-listed properties are displayed at NAR-affiliated Realtor.com.  more…

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Ever search for a word but can’t seem to find it? Or try to recall a fact that won’t roll off the tip of your tongue?

Ever need to buy a vowel from Vanna White?

What’s missing from the online real estate experience?

As part of a brand analysis for an East Coast brokerage, I drilled 10 pages deep into Google’s results for "real estate" in the company’s market area. I explored every result. There were 100 Web sites in total. Of these 100 sites:  more…

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Even as the California Association of Realtors pursues a statewide real estate data-sharing effort that could evolve as a statewide multiple listing service, regional collaborations among multiple listing services are pushing forward with their own plans.  more…

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