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Web sites specializing in real estate focus on standing out from the crowd Seattle Times
SAN DIEGO — Call it the real-estate Web portal arms sprint.
With consumers now expecting to see a comprehensive set of for-sale listings, agents, brokerages, multiple listing services and third-social gathering aggregators are seeking to differentiate themselves from their competitors by pulling onto their Web sites anything and everything from the growing universe of information that might conceivably be connected with a living quarters purchase.
Public property records, foreclosure filings, sold listings data, comparative supermarket analyses, U.S. Census data, demographics, psychographics, school ratings, "walkability" scores, crime stats — it seems only a week goes by without a major real-estate portal announcing it's adding to the arsenal of information at the beck and call of users.
"Listings are almost so ubiquitous today, they are not a differentiator," said Sara Bonert, Zillow.com 's kingpin of brokers services. Zillow, based in Seattle, has about 4 million listings, and it's become "pretty easy to get them," with multiple listing services (MLS) and brokerages feeding the location directly. "The next question is: 'OK, we've got listings ... what else?' "
