We’re proud to unveil today RealEstatevoices, a social news site for real estate related stories. Social what? Simply, RealEstateVoices allows you to submit your favorite real-estate related articles, whether they be from a newspaper or a blog, and then other users vote on how interesting those stories are. The most popular ones make it to the front page.

The end result is a site that features the most interesting stories of the day. As an example of how you can add interesting content to your site, we’ve added a feed of the top 5 stories of the day to the left hand side of this blog.

Social news sites were pioneered by the likes of Digg and Reddit for technology news. While those sites are growing like crazy, there is no similar forum for real estate related news. We hope RealEstateVoices can be that forum.

We launched the site mainly to give authors a platform to promote their great work, and for us, as readers, to filter through the news that matters.

Be sure to register and start voting and submitting on stories now and then let us know where we can improve or if you have any suggestions for future improvements.

As you can see by the newly-added Stats ticker at the top of each page, we’ve been adding hundreds of thousands of listings every month now and are on track to have about two thirds of the nationals real estate covered soon and our goal of 85% by the end of the year is nearing (there is a theoretical limit to what we can do because some states like Texas don’t have real estate transactions as public record).

Lucky for you, most do. In recent weeks we’ve added comprehensive coverage of Hawaii, such that every Realtor’s current activity should now be showing. Similarly, Utah and Wisconsin, are also comprehensively covered.

You should see the relevance of search results begin to really increase in those states and more. If you’d like us to prioritize your state, just let us know in the comments.

In most exciting news, we’re almost done digesting the biggest state of all: Florida! Not quite but the majority of activity is now showing up on the site. Onwards and upwards!

Dearest readers,

It is my sad duty to inform you that I will no longer be posting to this blog. As of this week, I’ll be moving to another company, and so my antics (and internship) here at the Homethinking blog are at an end. I’ve definitely learned a lot from all of you, and if you’re reading this, I’ll assume that I wasn’t a total bore myself . So thanks to the people who supported my blogging efforts, and to any loyal readers (you know who you are) who I’ve picked up over the last couple of months. I hope you all continue to read and enjoy this blog, and wish you all the best!

Much Thanks,
Tony Floriani

[Ed's Note: And many thanks to you Tony, you showed a fresh approach to thinking and enlivened our blog so that now we have something to carry on. You'll also see some of the fruits of Tony's internship next week: stay tuned!]

At Homethinking, there are two ways in which we try to rank Realtors: based on what they have done (through objectively monitoring real estate data) and secondly, what customers have said about the job they did. So what do home owners say about their Realtors? We decided to take a look based on the few thousand reviews consumers have filled out on Homethinking so far this year. In our reviews there are six categories where a Realtor can get up to a 5 star rating, and on average, the Realtors have done very well:

One thing that you might have notice however, is that as a group, they lag slightly behind in one aspect of their business: their web sites.

We’ve found that people rank the effectiveness of the Realtor’s web site consistently lower than the other categories. Despite the fact that real estate advertising is moving rapidly from print space to online, many Realtors still seem to struggle with how to make an effective website (or don’t have a site at all!).

An effective website is not a question of cost. Web hosting has fallen to less than a monthly coffee allowance and free software like those that blogs run on can offer a surprisingly robust way to manage a web sites content. A great example is Derek Rey of San Francisco, who uses blog software as a great compliment to his web site. The cause is more likely the complexity of setup and the daunting nature of the task for those who have not grown up with technology.

So where to go? One great resource for technology suggestions is The Future of Real Estate Marketing and Inman News, who cover the real estate technology space very well.

One thing is for sure though, as the effectiveness of a web site becomes an increasingly important part of the Homeowner’s decision, those without an effective online presence will be left aside for one who does.

More of my weekly favorites!

United States housing bubble – Wikipedia – Thanks to keen observations by Matrix, I found this in-depth explanation of the housing bubble phenomenon that seems to be on everyone’s minds these days.
Beginning the Home Buying Process – Rain City Guide – I can’t believe no one thought of this sooner! I know I’ll be tuning in for more updates on this step-by-step walkthrough of the home-buying process.
Census Data Trends – Zillow Blog – These guys really love their statistics! Great insights about recently released census data.
Is the MLS Totally Clueless? – Trulia Blog – Some very intelligent commentary on finding common ground between FSBO’s and MLS.
Housing Market: Skateboarding Through Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics and Ancedotes – Matrix – When everyone’s got a different story to tell, who can you trust to tell it right?
Real Estate Fatwa – 360 digest – If you’re in the know, you might have realized how tough it can be for a Muslim to work in real estate without being involved in interest-based loans. Here’s how they do it!

At Homethinking, we’re dedicated to helping people find the right Realtor to sell their home with. We think that a good Realtor can provide definite benefits for anyone thinking about selling their most valuable asset. But while we’re of the opinion that real estate professionals are well worth their commissions, not everyone agrees with us. FSBOs (For Sale By Owner) are certainly a valid slice of the market, and so I decided to find out just how many there were. Of course, this wasn’t as easy as it might sound, so I had to settle for stats on currently available FSBOs from one of the largest FSBO sites on the web, ForSaleByOwner.com, coupled with projected census data for 2005.

According to the data I collected on 9/13/06, there are 38,721 properties listed in the United States on ForSaleByOwner.com. The states with highest concentration of FSBOs (in terms of people per FSBO) were:

And the States with the lowest rate of FSBOs in the country were:

There are some caveats with the data. The number of FSBO listings traditionally is 15-20% of the market. According to realtor.com there are 3 million listings with a Realtor representing them. So forsalebyowner.com’s 40,000 are clearly not representative of the whole market. And their sales team might be better in some areas than others causing a skew towards those states where they are better or worse.

But still the question of why a home owner in Michigan is over ten times more likely than his compatriot in Hawaii to go the FSBO route is an intriguing one. Perhaps even more intriguing, California – with Silicon Valley at its heart – features so low on the list. So the technology savvy of its inhabitants, it seems, does not necessarily effect the decision to engage a Realtor when selling their home.

If you’re state isn’t on the list, just leave a comment and we’ll be sure to post it.

-Tony Floriani

The new Carnival of Real Estate is now up at the Real Estate Tomato. We’re not in there this week (we were busy with our relaunch), but there are some fantastic links that everyone should check out. Thanks Tomato, great pics for the top 12!

Since we’ve been busy with the relaunch of our site this week, I haven’t been able to keep up with my posting as much as I wanted to, so you’ll all just have to be satisfied with these wonderful links instead.

Simplifying the Buying Process – (Rain City Guide) – A great list of seven questions to ask if you’re looking for (or representing someone who’s looking for) a new home.
Zillow Poll Results: Agent’s Labor Still Needed – (Sellsius Blog) – An interesting poll conducted by Sellsius tells us in black and white why Zillow won’t run traditional agent’s out of business.
Freedom’s Friends: The Curbed Instant Guide – (Curbed) – The Freedom Tower’s gonna have 3 little brothers, making Greenwich Street the home to a whole Freedom Family! The New York based bloggers I read have covered this one to death, but here’s one post that pretty much sums it up.
The Brits, the Aussies, and the Price of Your House – (Hot Property) – An interesting analysis of how the behavior of British and Australian real estate markets may foreshadow our own fate.
Real Estate Advertising Moving to Internet from Newspapers – (The Real Estate Bloggers) – It’s not the first time we’ve heard it, but this sums up the concept quite well.
Are you in an “untraditional” relationship? You can still buy a home – (Boston Real Estate Blog) – Some option for ‘untraditional’ couples seeking home ownership.

Our new site went live this morning bringing maps closer to the forefront of navigation and showing the great progress we’ve made recently in expanding our coverage (we have over 1.5 million transactions now).

One thing that we’ve been wanting to do for a while is make our mapping features more interactive and useful to consumers. Now mapping takes center stage as a way for people to find and compare homes sold in a particular area. On the new site, you’ll be able to get all of the pertinent information about a home that’s been sold or is for sale (i.e. who sold it, when, and for how much) from helpful markers right on the map! Then, if you want to learn more about the sale or the agent involved, you can simply click on the link for additional details.

But just as important as the site’s new look is what’s under the hood. We’ve been working nonstop to increase our coverage of home sales transactions for 2006, and those efforts are really paying off. With all of the new data we’ve collected (and will continue to collect) we can offer even better service in the locations we cover, while rapidly incorporating new locations which were previously unavailable to us.

If you want to view the full press release, you can do so here, and below is an example of a map you can place on your blog through an emerging standard called GeoRSS – which is an extension of the commonly used RSS. You can find out more about the map you see below by going to this page on our site.

-Tony Floriani

»Get a recent home sales map for your site.
» About: Homethinking monitors what each real estate agent has done and consumer reviews about them.

about this article in the New York Times, that is. The article has stirred up quite the hornet’s nest of activity in the real estate blogging community, and since everyone seems to be talking about it, now I’m gonna get my two cents in.

Getting straight to the point, I definitely don’t think that internet based companies like Redfin will kill off traditional real estate agents, or even degrade their commission significantly. At least not any time soon. For starters, according to the article, they’ve closed 89 transactions since they went into business. This doesn’t seem like an earth-shattering number to me, considering how many homes are bought and sold here in the US each year, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they aren’t the final word in real estate.

What Redfin, and sites like it, are doing is filling a niche. It’s obviously not the lion’s share of the market right now, but there are people out there who feel that they are competent enough to find or sell a home without professional assistance. For people like this, a service that allows you to save money by doing most of the leg work yourself may be just what the doctor ordered. There is, however, still a huge demand for real estate professionals and their services, and I don’t see that changing in the forseeable future.

Why? Two reasons: Time and expertise.

Sure, with the internet, everything is becoming so easy to just do-it-yourself. Everything from trading stocks to booking flights to (gasp!) real estate searches! But real estate is a bit more complicated than finding discount airfare, and dealing in it can be very hard work, especially if you’re not familiar with it. In terms of buyers, not everyone has the time to do all that work that a realtor does to find a home that’s right for them. Furthermore, many people value the expertise of a good agent who can take on the burden of sniffing out appropriate homes, do it quickly and efficiently, and maybe even find a gem which they wouldn’t have looked at otherwise. And for Sellers, the potential time saved, coupled with the financial benefits that can be gained from hiring a real estate professional are tremendous, even moreso than for a buyer.

So the long and the short of it is, traditional real estate agents shouldn’t fret. Just keep doing what you do best and make the buying and selling process as smooth and advantageous to your clients as possible. People vote with their wallets, and right now, they seem to be saying that they will pay for that kind of professional service. And if they need help finding one of these professionals, we’re more than happy to lend a hand!

-Tony Floriani