In early November, Marc Davison and Brian Boero over at 1000watt consulting published their view of the real estate 2.0 universe. From blogs to maps to brokerages, they have an excellent read on what is going on in the market. We are pleased to be included in this esteemed crowd of real estate innovators.
We launched our first Price Me Now sweepstakes today. The rules are simple – for every 25,000 points you get, you earn 1 entry in the sweepstakes with a maximum of 5 entries. The contest ends at midnight November 29. After we wait a few days for the mail in entries to arrive (it is the law), we will choose the winner. What do you win – $250 gift certificate to Amazon.com. Just in time for the holidays, Realius could stuff your stocking without hitting your wallet. Read the rules here.
Thanks to Susan Brady over at Redfin for telling her readers about our game in this post.
At the end of her post, Susan talks about the scoring in the game. She writes,
However, I did notice on two of the guesses that I was given 100% when my estimates were way off, so there may need to be some tweaking on this site.
We are looking to clear up any confusion about the scoring in the game. The object of the game is to guess what you think a home will sell for. As the game plays today, you’re not actually scored against how close your guess is to the List Price. The interface strongly suggests this, but that’s not the case. In fact, your accuracy is based on how close you are to the moving average of all of the user guesses. We call this the Realius Price, and you can see the RP in your player profile when you look at the house details.
Check out this week’s Newsweek. It looks like this:
If you turn to page 17 you’ll see this nice piece about Realius.
Over the past few days we have been emailing people who signed up for our mailing list. Today we received our first out-of-office reply in German!
Hallo,
ich bin von 14. bis voraussichtlich 15. November krank und werde meine E-Mails nur ab und zu lesen. Wenden Sie sich in dringenden Fällen bitte an (Name): . Mit freundlchen Grüßen
(Name) Produktmanagement Immobilienwirtschaft
A translation courtesy of Google, note the last few words:
Hi,
I am from 14 To probably 15th November sick and would only from my e-mails and read. Ask in urgent cases, please contact (Name): . With freundlchen sincerely
(Name) Product Management Real Estate Industry
Happy Geography Awareness Week! Thanks to Ronald Reagan, the third week in November is Geography Awareness Week. At this point in the post, it is only fair for me to disclose that I was a geography major. Over the past few years, tools like Google Maps and Google Earth have made geographic information available and meaningful to the masses on an unprecedented scale. Everyday there are new mashups to check out. Keep your eye on Google Maps Mania to see the latest and greatest Google Maps mashups. Get involved yourself at Geocommons.com, where you can upload geographic data, make and share maps. If you have a gripe with a neighbor and you’d like get that off your chest, head over to Rotten Neighbor where you can upload rants about neighbors to their exact residences on a map. If you would like to see hyper-local news by browsing a map, check out Yourstreet.com.
We recognize the integral role that spatial and economic context plays in the valuation of real estate. When asking a player what she thinks a home is worth in our first game, we provide price points of local, recent comparable sales. We put that data in a geographic context by mapping the locations of those recent sales. Check out a screenshot from the game. Each comparable sale in the table is show as a red house on the map.
Click here try out the game in the Oakland/Berkely area of Northern California!
That is the question of the day at Realius. As we prepare for the launch in our first market – Oakland, CA Metro area, we have put together a simple little site to find out where you want to play. Click here and let us know.
Many of tomorrow’s first time home buyers were chatting with each other on AOL years before they experienced their first kisses. In college, they performed full text searches on Lexus Nexus for research papers instead of using card catalogs and Xerox machines. Today, they email on the go and expect responses from friends within hours, not days. Jason Benesch over at The Real Estate Tomato, has a great post about the maturing generation of First Time Home Buyers.
Our knowledge comes from the intelligence of the mob. There are websites that let us view user ratings on news, bookmarks, urban definitions, wines, burritos, beers, and videos. I want to have that same experience when searching for my first home. Show me what the community thinks. Show me what the Realtors think. Give me the data the way I am used to receiving it.
Our first game, a home pricing game, meets Jason’s requests. Players will see what the community thinks homes are going to sell for and how they fit into that community. Take a look at a partial screenshot from the game:
Players will also see what realtors think and will be scored on how close their guess is to the ‘crowd guess’. Games speak to The Millenial Generation.
