Friday, March 28, 2008
Sotheby’s International Realty (SIR)- Clock Tower , Carmel-by-the-Sea, and Carmel Valley became the first in the Monterey region to offer their clients a branded CleanOffer site: Sotheby’s Private Client MLS.
Patrick Barber (SIR- Senior Vice President/Managing Broker, San Francisco) and Frank Symons (SIR- Executive Vice President/COO, Western Region) forward thinking brought CleanOffer to the San Francisco Sotheby’s office just over a year ago. Now it’s being introduced in the SIR- Carmel offices which will also reap the benefits of a special Sotheby’s branded CleanOffer site.
More than 70% of SIR San Francisco agents use Private Client MLS powered by CleanOffer, and within the first two weeks of its release in Carmel over 15% of SIR Carmel agents have adopted the tool to use with their clients. Agents and clients alike love it. We are excited to witness the same success in Monterey as we have in San Francisco.
A special thanks to Patrick, Frank, Kent Nelson, and all the SIR agents and management who supported us and gave us testimonials.
Posted by Matt Harris on 03/28 at 01:04 PM
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Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Yesterday we previewed the new “My Briefcase”. Today we want to preview one of the portlets that is going to be on the Agent’s dashboard: the “My Listings Portlet”.
My Listings Portlet
In a previous release we’ve added the ability for agents to promote their listings on Google Base. We later realized that it was hard to let our users know about this new feature; and once we announced it, it wasn’t intuitive for them to actually promote their listing on Google Base unless they’ve done it at least once.
The My Listings Portlet gives you, the agent, access to all the listing tools on the first page. So promoting your listing on Google became as simple as going to CleanOffer, locating the listing you want to promote inside the My Listings Portlet, and selecting promote on Google Base.
Listing Tools
Not only that but you can feature your listing on CleanOffer, view your property comparison report, view your listing report and much more with the same ease.
On top of that the My Listings Portlet has a quick peek to your listing report allowing you to quickly view your listing report without navigating away from your dashboard.
My Listings Portlet Quick Peek
Posted by Nadeem Bitar on 03/26 at 11:05 AM
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Tuesday, March 25, 2008
On April 8, we are releasing a major new version that features a completely redesigned “My Briefcase”.
The current “My Briefcase” was conceived as a central dashboard for agents and clients to quickly access the tools they need, and view at a glance important information.
Unfortunately as we added new features to the application, the dashboard (My Briefcase) did not expose them and they ended up hidden behind a series of links making them un-discoverable and less useful. The dashboard became a glorified navigation system and the information displayed (view screenshot below) became meaningless.
The Old My Briefcase
We completely redesigned the dashboard for the upcoming release to address the current design’s shortcomings. We’ve introduced portlets which put the most important information and tools at your fingertips. Here is a screenshot of the upcoming “My Briefcase” page for agents.
The New My Briefcase
The agent’s dashboard will have 7 portlets:
- My Clients
- My Listings
- Saved Searches
- New Matches
- My Favorites
- Client Invitations
- Search History
The portlets should be self explanatory and I’ll cover a few of them in an upcoming blog post.
The new Briefcase accomplishes a few things:
- Lets you view valuable, timely, important information quickly.
- Lets you perform your task in an unintrusive way.
- Lets you discover new tools and functionality with minimum effort.
Over the next week we’ll be unveiling more details about portlets and other upcoming features. Stay tuned.
Posted by Nadeem Bitar on 03/25 at 01:05 PM
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Monday, March 17, 2008
Whether you are a real estate agent, a serious home buyer or serious home seller, it is critical that you stay very knowledgeable about your local real estate market. Empowering yourself with this information keeps the playing field “un-leveled” in your favor.
• What just got listed?
• What just went into escrow?
• What just got priced reduced?
• Are homes selling and for how much?
Agent blogs like this Austin one provide a good market overview. Still, if you are truly serious about local real estate, you must possess real-time market data about specific listings of the types and locations that matter to you. In local real estate, knowledge truly is power.
We are all very busy, so how do you get this information with minimal time and energy on your part? I manage various online real estate service companies while remaining an active real estate broker. Combine this with being an involved single parent and my time is extremely limited!
Here is how to stay on top of the real estate market with ease using CleanOffer.
1. Search CleanOffer.com for the areas and types of properties that matter to you
2. Save those searches on CleanOffer.com to automatically get “New Matches” emailed to you
3. Save individual listings to “My Favorites” to get instant status and price change email alerts about those properties
By saving properties to “My Favorites” you will immediately know when a home goes in or out of escrow or has a price change. You are also notified when it sells including the sales price.
The result is that you truly stay on top of your market with very little effort. Being instantly smarter about local real estate helps you buy the right home at the best price, sell your home for the highest price and make you more money as a real estate agent.
Coooooool!
Posted by David Faudman on 03/17 at 01:11 PM
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Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Like any homeowner, I care what my house is worth. Even if I don’t plan to sell, I always want to believe that somebody would pay lots of money for it if I did. A bigger number gives me piece of mind and frankly, makes me feel cool. Yet, with all the bad real estate news of late, even as a Realtor, I have been less sure about what it’s worth.
So I decided to check out my Larkspur, California home on those online home valuation websites.
The valuation sites I used were RealEstateABC, Zillow, Cyberhomes, and Eppraisal. Here is what they said my house was worth:
RealEstateABC - $1,950,000
Zillow - $2,081,000
Cyberhomes - $1,041,411
Eppraisal - $1,726,963
Now I am more confused than ever! Cyberhomes and Zillow and two of the most highly used online home value estimators. So how can they be $1,039,589 apart on the same exact same house on the exact same day? That’s a 100% disagreement between the two. Even a difference 10-20% really makes planning your life or feeling cool pretty difficult.
Apparently, I am not the only person to run into this problem. Zillow got in trouble with the Arizona Board of Appraisal for their approach. In all fairness, all these site state in one way or another that they should only be used as a starting point in valuing a home. Besides, their real goal is not accuracy but rather to get visitors to their sites in order to sell advertising.
So what if you are actually planning on selling or buying a home? Can these sites help? The answer depends on where you live. The more similar the homes in your area, the closer these sites should be to reality. What they all miss are things like: views, property condition, lot usability, neighbors, sex appeal, etc. Nothing is more important in selling a home than setting the right asking price. The local market knowledge that an experienced and smart real estate agent provides is critical in helping decide how much to ask or how much to pay for a house. For the more self-service type, use a tool like CleanOffer to track current listings and get true sold prices.
So how would I rank order the above valuation sites for accuracy this week?
1. Zillow
2. RealEstateABC
3. Eppraisal
4. Cyberhomes
Like all homeowners I like whoever thinks my home is worth the most!
Posted by David Faudman on 03/04 at 06:32 PM
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