City Specific Home Searching
Issue 36 - June 11th, 2021
The unbundling of home searching portals will happen at some point in the future as consumers seek more in-depth data dives on properties, neighborhoods, and city-specific intricacies, anomalies, and amenities. “Unbundling” means that we will go from having Zillow and the large nationwide portals to city specific search portals which people will describe as “Zillow but ONLY for Austin,TX” as an example.
I wrote a post a few months back about how the current search process for homes has not changed much since sites like Zillow and others were launched, but in today’s post I want to explore this thought a bit further. If you want to reference my previous post then please click here, “Consumer Home Searching Sucks”.
I know there is a huge need for these more in-depth portals, and I think consumers would flock to these sites over Zillow, Trulia, RedFin etc. Consumers love having information at their fingertips and we are at a point in today’s world where people want more than just the basic info provided on search sites today. The data provided by these large aggregators is great and gives consumers almost as much info as real estate agents get through the MLS, but at the end of the day it is still hard to get an “on the streets subjective” vibe from the current search portals. Consumers deserve to know more, and the data that is available just needs to be presented in a better way.
My Idea For City-Specific Searching
In addition to the standard search data and property metrics displayed today (BORING), wouldn’t it be cool to see some of this data too?
Heat maps showing everything from the neighborhoods with the most recent transactions, highest prices per foot, crime, most new listings, and on and on - we need more visuals, graphs, and maps in our home searching sites
Links to local news outlets and neighborhood specific websites or publications
Interesting local influencers to follow on social media
Interviews or walking tours with neighborhood residents
Links to Homeowners Associations websites for neighborhoods
Information from the city on permits or future construction projects such as a new park coming to a neighborhood
Traffic flow maps showing congestion points and rush hour traffic movements
School zones and other things like this that people don’t think about when they view a house
Trash pick-up frequency and recycling options
Uber Eats delivery times to an address
Air traffic patterns for planes and helicopters over an address
Commuter bicycle routes
Bus and subway lines
Police, Fire, and EMS average response times
Internet signal strength for a home or neighborhood
Number of rental homes and short-term rentals in an area
And on and on and on…
Comment below on things you would love to be able to search, or email me at Sam@Archetape.com - have a great weekend!
Newsworthy Links To Share
Propy successfully completes the WORLD’S first NFT property transaction in Kyiv via Michael Arrington’s apartment. (TechCrunch)
FlyHomes raises $150 Series C to expand their “cash-offer” product for residential home buyers. (Housing Wire)
Co-living startup Common acquiring Starcity’s management assets. The acquisition is of select management agreements, and not Starcity’s development portfolio. (Crunchbase)
House, a home staging and home furnishing marketplace, raised $3 million in a seed round led by Range Ventures, the company announced Tuesday. (Crunchbase)
“Offerpad's version of iBuying stands out because it is losing radically less money than its peers. Offerpad's overall net loss per home is significantly lower than Zillow and Opendoor -- $5,400 compared to Opendoor's $29,000 in 2020. And it's overall net loss in 2020 was $23 million, twelve times smaller than Opendoor's $286 million.” - Read more from Mike DelPrete (Mike DelPrete Blog)
Tiger Global leads $30 million dollar investment into Briq, a fintech platform for the construction industry. Briq describes its offering as a financial planning and workflow automation platform that “drastically reduces” the time to run critical financial processes, while increasing the accuracy of forecasts and financial plans.(TechCrunch)
Regions Bank makes close to $1 Billion Dollar acquisition of EnerBank to expand their suite of products for home improvement loans. (Business Wire)
PROPERTY HIGHLIGHT: Showstopping contemporary home on over 6 acres on Lake Travis outside of Austin,TX.
On 6.4 acres along the north shore of Lake Travis, architect Mell Lawrence has designed an award winning contemporary waterfront home from natural materials. Inviting the nature that surrounds it, this home displays locally quarried limestone, hardwood flooring, fir beam ceilings, clerestory & wall-to-wall windows that embed clean lines and natural light for an airy wooded ambiance. Includes gourmet kitchen, separate guest house and office, outdoor spa and fire pit. +/-280' waterfront on deep water cove. Fully furnished and includes a golf cart, UTV, a go-kart, and outdoor playset. The home has a full Control 4 smart home system installed with speakers throughout. CLICK HERE FOR MORE PHOTOS —> (Zillow)
