Estately Chooses Portland for 2nd Market Release
Another home search vendor has landed in Portland, migrating this time from Seattle with a bulging portfolio of online house-hunting features.
Mashing up RMLS (Portland’s multiple listing service) data with Google maps and a first-rate search interface, Estately.com joins the ranks of Roost and a very small handful of local brokers with truly Web 2.0 house-shopping experiences using actual MLS-derived listings.
Users may be disappointed not to find addresses, but the map interface does a good job of visually placing the location in the Google map. If address is critical to your search, you will need to register yourself with a local agent to establish what is construed to be a legitimate broker/client relationship. For example, I use the HomeQuest service to provide the neighborhood search + maps + addresses, etc. information to clients.
But without involving an agent, the Estately service can give you a leg up in your learning experience. Then, if you wish to engage the services of a local agent, Estately is partnering with local brokers to give you a handful of pre-vetted agent selections to anonymously research and interview at your discretion.
Estately has other handy search features — search by neighborhood, proximity to transportation, and by keyword (i.e. fixer, short sale, hardwoods, etc) to name a few. You can tap into local market conditions, neighborhood, school, parks, and other attractions from their tabbed menus. Registering with Estately will get you access to a Saved Searches and Properties feature, plus email updates on pricing of specific listings.
Estately (originally ShackPrices.com) was co-founded by Galen Ward, a regular contributor to Seattle’s Rain City Guide real estate blog (and my inspiration to start my own). Galen bootstrapped the fledgling company on an initial $20,000 investment, and recently raised $450,000 in new capital. Estately’s development has been closely watched by many in the real estate technology community, and Portland is fortunate to be the second stop in Estately’s growth plan.
It’s early in their Portland release, so I ran into a few hiccups in the map search, primarily when it came to clicking on a property for further details (although it could be my choice of operating system and browser–Mac/Firefox). It was sometimes a little poky in refreshing the maps, and the neighborhoods and days on market information needs some refinement, too.
Nevertheless, suddenly in Portland, there is a wealth of real estate shopping options with multi-mode search features to keep any property junkie occupied.
Read more at the Estately blog.
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8 comments May 27th, 2008
