Thoughts on a real estate meta search engine

Anyone know of any meta search website that searches realestate.com.au, domain, allhomes ect?
Kinda like how tripadvisor searches all hotel booking sites at the same time.

I regularly have two tabs open, realestate.com.au and domain, just so I can see all listing. Yes 90% of the listings are the same but every now and then you find a gem.

I am thinking of setting one up if there is none available, thoughts ?

 

Do you mean you're trying to build new site to compete with those already well known websites ?

 

I think it would work well as a app,if it covered everything from every angle that connects you with the vendor,the link is about one year old..
Tales from the sharing economy | Silversquare

 

Investar has a similar idea where they run searches on listing sites and allows you to tailor your search criteria.

They don't search realestate.com.au though.

Cheers,
Michael

 

For personal use probably OK. But a public site you may get into trouble with REA/Domain in regards to their terms of service. Plus setting one up that works and is scalable to thousands of users will require $millions and be your full time occupation for the next 10 years.

Onthehouse.com.au tries to do it but I often find listings on REA/Domain that are not yet on here so it isn't the latest data.

Nice idea though, my main residence is a home that was only listed on Domain and had one other person viewing it when I came and took a look. I suspect not listing on REA (either by accident or on purpose) was quite costly as it sold for a bit cheaper than it could have got IMO.

 

Make it with a few special tabs and it'd be a winner. "time on market", " flood map overlays", "comments" and "previously listed with" would be a godsend.

 

www.homekoala.com

Dont know if anyone has looked at this but saw it on reddit. someone developed it, an independent search engine

 

Not sure if its any good... I put in my suburb and no listings came up.

 

just had a look at homekoala.com and it seems like they are missing quite a few listings. My idea would be to have it set up similar to how tripadvisor has it set up, you type in an area it pops up available properties, shows you whether it is listed on realestate.com or domain or multiple sites, then once you click on the listings it will direct you to the realestate.com listing page, so in a sense not really stealing anyone's content. It will start of quite simple just for private/propertychat use and gradually scale up if needed.

 

Think bigger,there are several sites out there that depending on how one thinks are already like tripadvisor,and from what people tell me this could also be done within the real estate sales industry and several others employment areas,where pre-existing regulations are not prepared for silent change,and be more traceable and tax compliance,nothing stays the same..

 

I'd like Airbnb to show car spaces for rent. Yes I know there are dedicated sites but nice and easy for a current airbnb host if its in the same place. I envisage guests can tick if they need my car space or not and if they don't, I could potentially then lease the car space.....

 

I like how you can find old listings on https://www.homehound.com.au/

 

Hello Gockie, I'm actually one of the guys working on Homekoala. May I know which suburb you searched for that did not have listings?

 

As far as we know, we are the only property search engine other than Mitula and Nestoria. Our listings are limited to WA/NSW and VIC at the moment. In addition, we do not gather listings from any of the existing portals, only agency websites.

 

In theory, potentially a good idea. A few thoughts and considerations though.

1) what would be the main benefit for users, and how would the users find you?
2) are you looking to monetise the venture or will it be a labour of love?
3) the main benefit with rea and domain is the millions they spend on search and listing features and the whole user experience. If yours is not up to standard, will people use it?

 

The existing sites use pretty 'dumb' forms of old-fashioned searches, but designed to push you towards they wish you to browse to maximise their monetisation. For instance "most relevant" is always the default, because it is the listings they want/have paid them to put as priority. Then there are probably ways they target the advertising per type of specific search. So there may be ways they *could* do it better, but do not wish to.

If you could do a smarter search (across multiple sites even better), such as more complex drill-down, using more specific criteria that would be relevant to a smarter buyer, it could be a lot more valuable, and save a lot of time.

For instance you could allow users to add keywords they thought applied to the property (peer reviewed), such as "run-down", "close to transport", "on main road". You could be able to better search specific words the agent had put in the description, "deceased estate" + "land greater than 700m2" + "close to transport". Or you could hook into google maps api to automagically find the nearest main roads, shops, transport options and add these accordingly to the listing and allow a user to better search / drill down from there.

If it were a meta-site, then could also filter by "not on REA", or "only on domain", etc.

There are plenty of technologies that can offer this sort of advanced search across this sort of big data, that would really take things to the next level. However the incumbents are happy to do things the way they are doing unless there was any great competition.

Unfortunately the companies that run the large REA sites will sue you sooner than you can blink if they think you are capturing "their" data. Even if you may be able to do it better, the law very much sides with keeping those keeping the control, and anybody else setting up their own side business can be quickly squashed (even though it may in fact be a complementary business...to start with ).

 

Speaking of mega search engine... how many of you have heard of GDELT?

Google it....

 

Just read the terms and conditions on realestate.com.au and it said this

'In accessing or using our websites you agree that you will not:

(a) use any automated device, software, process or means to access, retrieve, scrape, or index our websites or any content on our website; '
Damn I hate when things get complicated like this.

 

Omg... I found the Granddaddy of Airbnb data!