Roost: A High-Flying Real Estate Search Engine

In the tempest of the current housing slowdown, the last thing you’d expect to hear is the launch of a new real estate technology startup.

Nevertheless, today marks the unveiling of Roost.com, a venture capital-backed consumer real estate search site, whose model will rely on advanced and thorough multiple listing searches, as well as partnerships with local Realtors, agents and MLS boards.

I was privy to a little advance notice of this service because my brokerage, Advanced Real Estate Services (and a select other few here in Portland) is participating in Roost’s public beta. So, if you choose Portland in the Roost interface and drill down for detailed property information, you will likely be directed to the areshome.com site to view the property details–and hopefully, engage an agent to assist in your homebuying experience.

Unlike Trulia and Zillow, Roost’s listings come from the local multiple listing service, meaning that users are seeing the actual inventory in each local MLS system. Besides Portland, Roost opened searches for Atlanta, Baltimore, Boise, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis, Orange County, Philadelphia, Sacramento, San Diego, and Washington, D.C.

Roost would appear to appeal to the independent agency market, like us. Many large brokers have their own search tools, but smaller agencies and individual agents cannot afford to build their own. Roost’s revenue stream will come from brokers buying click-throughs from Roost based on geography, akin to Google’s AdWords.

Roost’s launch was well-covered and analyzed this morning by real estate industry bloggers Joel Burslem, Dustin Luther, Greg Swann, plus TechCrunch.

I’ve provided a couple screen captures below, but you should try it out yourself at www.roost.com. The search parameters (image above left) are easy to modify, using the sliders we’ve come to see on sites like Trulia and others.

The search results are displayed rather quickly.

Hovering over a thumbnail of the attached photos pulls up a larger image. Very slick.

Technorati Tags: roost.com, startup, real estate, 2.0, mashup, IDX, Realtor, Trulia, Zillow, listings, areshome.com

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13 comments January 23rd, 2008