Realius

6:30 AM is not prime time, but thanks to the internet late sleepers can see the spot that San Francisco KRON ran on Realius and a couple other new companies covered at the Techcrunch40 conference.

According to an article published in the New York Times yesterday, disparate answers to this question from obstinate sellers and prospective buyers can spell significant negative effects for the larger economy. In the New York Times article, A Reality Check for Home Sellers, Austan Goolsbee, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and research fellow at the American Bar Foundation, describes research conducted in Boston from 1989 to 1992 when prices fell sharply for condominiums. Due to a large downturn in the market and people’s hatred of losing money, some Bostonian condo owners in the early 1990’s priced condos far too high, pricing relative to their purchase price, not the prevailing market price. As a result, many condos sat on the market unsold.

Fast forward to 2007 and the Federal Reserve and others are concerned that what was documented in Boston in the early 1990’s might occur in many other markets as the housing market softens. Why does this matter? It matters because:

If sellers can’t sell their houses because they want too much for them, they also can’t become buyers of new homes.

“The buyers and the sellers are the same people in this market,” Professor Mayer said. “So if the sellers price so high that they, effectively, put themselves out of the market, it shows up on the buying side, too.”

… purchases of durable goods like furniture, appliances and televisions tend to run hand in hand with home purchases and durables have a disproportionate influence on the business cycle. Further, the freezing of the housing market makes it harder for people to move.

So what should homeowners do today? Here is the advise the Professor Mayer gives his own family members:

“If you want to sell your house then you list it at the market price and you sell it,” he said. “If you don’t really want to sell then don’t put it on the market. But don’t say you want to sell and then set the price so high that you spend the year cleaning up every morning, having people walk through your living room and look in your medicine cabinets and reject you. That’s just painful — and expensive.”

His research offers a simple lesson for everyone out there waiting for a high price to push them back into the black: Get real.

Professor Mayer’s advise assumes that sellers know what the market price of their property is. This is a nebulous area of real estate that Realius hopes to shed some light on. If you want to sell your house, play Fantasy Real Estate(TM) games to get both a good dose of reality and a good sense of what the market thinks your property is worth.

Ryan Kim and Adam Kopytoff from the San Francisco Chronicle ran a good article on the TechCrunch40 Show. Out of the 100 companies in the Demo Pit, they covered two three- Aviary, 1800Pharmacy.com and Realius.

A quick spin around the DemoPit, where another 100 startups showed their wares, revealed a number of ideas:

–Bay Area real estate fanatics will love Realius ( www.realius.com),
a Berkeley startup that’s building an online fantasy game based on
housing prices. Users sign on to a Web page and a house or condo
listing pops up, giving the usual information in any MLS listing. But,
on Realius, users guess how much the house is worth. Using comp
listings, the site gauges whether a guess is close to market value.
The usual fantasy-league high jinks ensue, ranking competitors
nationally and awarding prizes.

It was great to be in the pit with my fellow entrepreneurs. The buzz from the Demo Pit at the Palace Hotel was loud and constant. As I walked the floor, the typical discourse went as follows - “nice product, who are your customers and how will you make money.” Most of the answers were focused and concrete. I only ran into the “we’ll figure that one out later” comment a couple of times. It is refreshing to see product innovation and strong business models emerging.

Realius to unleash Fantasy Real Estate™ at TechCrunch40 conference

Reality based game company to demo its online real estate application to technology industry elite

BERKELEY, CA (September 14, 2007) – Realius, Inc. announced today that it will demo its Fantasy Real Estate™ application – a suite of web-based casual games that follow consumers throughout the homeownership lifecycle – at the TechCrunch40 Conference. TechCrunch40 will gather the world’s most influential technology experts, investors and startups on September 17th and 18th at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

“Realius captures the synergies between the enormous popular interest in casual gaming and Americans’ obsession with real estate,” said Realius CEO Chuck Teller “Our games engage consumers as they dream about, search for, buy, furnish, remodel and sell their homes in ways that are incredibly fun – but also instructive.”

Realius will allow conference attendees to play its flagship game, Price Me Now™, which challenges players to guess the price of homes for sale in their market, on the show floor. Price Me Now™ evaluates player guesses and awards points based on their performance against the “Realius” price, an aggregate combination of previous player price estimates and the actual list price. Real estate companies and professionals can purchase placement in the game as “coaches” who guide players and make their own professional price guesses.

“Games like Realius’s Price Me Now™ game draw on the core human emotions of places and things we aspire to,” said Richard Tait, Cranium Grand Poo Bah. Tait, an advisor to Realius, continues, “Fantasy Real Estate™ lets me imagine what it might be like to buy or sell a home in my neighborhood or a dream house in the mountains. This experience captures the imagination and passion of the player while providing a sticky business model proposition, and that is the perfect match in today’s entertainment world.”

Scott Kucirek, general manager of Prudential California Realty, one of the nation’s largest real estate companies, says “Real estate brokerages are struggling to connect with consumers online and Realius has the potential to solve that problem.” Kucirek continues, “Realius games are entertaining, addictive and educational for consumers but also provide companies in our industry with an entirely new way to think about customer engagement.”

Other Realius games forthcoming include Fantasy Flip™, which lets homeowners get community insight for various improvements they make by modifying photos of their homes, and Major League Investor™, which pits players against one another as they build fantasy portfolios.