ShackPrices.com hits the big time at InmanNews (free for now):
The latest real estate site to trace its roots to this rainy city is ShackPrices.com, which plots home listings in the Seattle area and western Washington state on Google maps.
ShackPrices.com went live a few weeks ago, and joins a growing list of sites aiming to simplify the hunt for real estate. Its founder, Galen Ward, has a technical background in mapping and databases and is a contributor to the Rain City Guide real estate blog.
Other real estate search sites vying for consumer attention include Trulia, HomePages.com, Realtor.com and the many broker-operated sites that also include listings.
“Our goal at the site is to make the process of finding and buying a home easier for consumers,” Ward said. Unlike some real estate search sites, ShackPrices is a member of the multiple listing service, which enables it to display a more comprehensive list of local properties for sale than a site operated by a nonmember.
The site enables consumers to enter home-search criteria from the homepage, and also features “Suggested Shacks” — homes that buyers might be interested in viewing based on their criteria and a proprietary algorithm.
Ward notes the importance of “all the niche decisions that go into buying a home” like neighborhood information that he felt were lacking in many existing real estate sites.
“When I started making maps and working in spatial databases four to five years ago, it occurred to me one day that the world is really lacking in info about what’s nearby a house. You could look up the price and size and stats on a house, but it was really lacking on the context of what the neighborhood was like, how close it is to amenities, what the views are,” he said.
Technorati Tags: disintermediation, real estate marketing
Galen says:
Thanks Greg. Now I know where to link to when it goes behind the wall.
January 3, 2007 — 3:47 pm