By Charlene Li

Apologies for the relative radio silence the past month. As some of you know, I’ve been engaged in a bit of house hunting, and in the past month I’ve 1) bought a house; 2) staged and sold a house; 3) decided to tear down, design and rebuild the house we bought; and 4) rented and moved into a temporary house over the weekend! The upshot: I’ve had first-hand experience with most of the new and existing real estate tools in the marketplace. So I figured I’d give you a quick take on the state of online real estate.

The past year has seen a resurgence of classifieds innovation, primarily in the recruitment area. Real estate is hitting its stride now. Here’s a quick review of some of the resources I used in the past few months:

-         MLSListings.com/Realtor.com: The mainstay of online real estate, Realtor.com is the consolidated site run by Homestore on behalf of the National Association of REALTORS. My local MLS has its own listings up at MLSListings.com. This was the bedrock of my search, even though it lacked a key feature – mapping all of the listings on a map. I had to painstakingly click into every listings and then click again to see a map. But I used it because it was guaranteed to have the lastest and most up-to-date listings.

-         Trulia.com: Launched in the middle of last year, this site is simply beautiful to use but inaccurate in its listings. This is because the site scrapes its listings via realtor sites, which may include listings that are pending or have been sold. It also didn’t have the most up to date listings either. The benefit of the site was it gave me a good idea of what the overall marketplace looks like, as it contains so much information that is easy to narrow or broaden given its browsable navigation. But I gave up using it later in my search when I needed to focus on active listings. If it can figure out a way to tap into the MLS listings, it will be a fantastic site.

-         Movoto.com (formerly iGenHome.com): If you’re lucky enough to live in either San Mateo or Santa Clara counties, then this is a great site. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear about the site until after I had bought my house in mid-January – and I really wish I had! All of the listings come directly from the MLS as Movoto is an actual real estate brokerage, which can republish the listings on its own site via the Internet Data Exchange (IDX) set up by the National Association of REALTORS. It’s therefore completely up to date. The site plots all of the current listings on a Google Map and mousing over a point on the map brings up a short synopsis (price, bedrooms, baths, square feet, lot size, and days on the market). Click through the link on the synopsis and you get not only the house details, but also the number of restaurants, grocery stores, etc. nearby but also local school information. Neighborhood data is also available, but the killer app is the comparable sales data. You normally need a realtor to pull this information for you, but Movoto does it all. Note: You DO have to register before receiving the sales data information, which generates a lead for the brokerage side of the business. The only problem: Movoto.com is great if you are buying a home, but not very useful if you are trying to figure out what your home is worth.

-         HomePages.com: A service provided by HouseValues, the top source of home sold information, launched Homepages.com last year. The service shows houses for sale on a map, much like Trulia.com. But just like Trulia, the listings aren’t updated and even more importantly, the user is left to create conclusions based on the fairly limited home sale information available. I also found the maps to be not as detailed as those from Google. The most interesting opportunity is the ability to get your home priced. I tried this service, which develops a lead for a local realtor. The pricing information was accurate and helpful, but I had to wait a few days for the information to arrive.

-         Zillow.com: This site, lead by former Expedia.com CEO Rich Barton, has significant VC backing behind it from Benchmark (to the tune of $32M in the last round). The site shows it too. A user can look at ALL of the estimated house values in a neighborhood, regardless of whether it is for sale or not. I was briefed by Zillow in mid-December and as a favor, they gave me the analysis on a house I was seriously considering as well as my current house. But what I’ve found most helpful with the house is as a current house owner thinking about a major rebuild – I use their calculator to figure out how much my house would be worth with specific renovations. Also, because I can see comparable house values of my neighbors, I can analyze whether my rebuild will be comparable to the neighborhood – or if I’m wildly overbuildling. As a result, I’m in the site several times a week trying out different scenarios to see what the impact will be on my house value. Best of all, I can actually go in and update a listing with information – for example, the house I recently sold had an incorrect square footage in Zillow’s database. I can also include recent upgrades, etc. that then get noted in their database’s valuation for the house (note: these consumer-created data points are duly noted as such).

Lastly, I had to also rent a house! There was one clear, hands down winner in this category, at least in the Bay Area – Craigslist.org. I also tried LiveDeal.com, which had almost no rental listings. This was not unexpected – they are much stronger in secondary markets). My local papers had few houses for rent. And I also tried Google Base, just to see how it’s doing. There not many listings (again, not unexpected) but I found the functionality painfully lacking. A free text search brought back only two listings in rentals, where as a browse-based search came back with 10 in total (including several duplicates). 

Overall, I believe all of these tools are still in their infancy. Realtors have by and large embraced using technologies like email and digital photography to update their business practices. But the central premise of realtors and also of the MLS is that they control the data, and hence, the process and the power. But as tools like Zillow tap into public databases – and more importantly, into the information that consumers themselves enter, that power will pass into the hands of the real estate consumer communities. This is yet another example of social computing taking its toll on traditional business models.

The impact: Realtor.com will have to do a major overhaul of its services if it hopes to compete against upstarts like movoto.com. The irony is that with IDX, Realtor.com may have to be reeling in its own members that can tap into the MLS with a better interface. Realtors themselves will to rethink how they earn their living – the traditional commission has already been under fire and these services will accelerate that trend. Realtors like ZipRealty are already doing their share by sharing 20-25% of the commission with buyers/sellers and as consumers do more and more of the work agents typically have done (such as sales comparables and sourcing), pressure on the commission rates will increase. I do expect that services like Movoto and Zillow will continue to make in-roads into traditional services offered by realtors (and their mortgage broker counterparts) but it’s in areas that are data intensive where machines excel.

This lead me to one final point on the role and future of realtors – we could not have gone through this process without our realtor, Samia Morgan. I found Samia five years ago via Realtor.com – yup, I found her on the Internet. I was relocating to the Bay Area and wanted an agent who felt VERY comfortable using technology as a communication and marketing tool. While I had all of the latest tools at my disposal, I wouldn’t have felt comfortable going into this complicated process without her. She was able to recommend a great house stager, builder, and even lent us a free truck to help with moving. But most importantly, she used her considerable connections and experience in the real estate market to understand how the market was changing – especially useful in a jittery market. We were extremely happy with both sides of the transaction, and especially the role that Samia played – we don’t think we could have successfully navigated the process on our own, nor do we ever really want to in the future!

Granted, technology will make significant in-roads into making the real estate process easier. But I don’t believe that realtors can be completely replaced. And I come from a family of for-sale-by-owner believers (one family member chided me that as an MBA grad, I should have ditched my agent and negotiated a lower price with the seller for not having to pay the buyer commission). This is because as long as real estate represents the biggest piece of our net worth, most of us are going to want professional help, especially if the other party is using an agent. But what we’re willing to pay for that help will come under pressure. The very best agents like Samia will continue to be able to get top notch rates – they will simply put these new tools in the hands of their clients and leverage their time more efficiently. Those still building a name for themselves will use those tools aggressively to generate leads and also lessen their own cost of doing business so that they can charge lower commissions rates. The upshot – the whole real estate business is going to undergo a fundamental shift in the next five years as realtors stratify into premium service providers and low-cost transaction providers.

BTW, if you know of any good online custom home construction resources, please let me know! One shortcoming we’ve discovered – there are few comparison shopping services for home builders, especially in the area of high-end appliances. We’ve already had good luck scoring a Sub-Zero refrigerator and freezer on eBay, but still have many other buying decisions to make!

Why Microsoft’s classifieds service will be better than Google Base

By Charlene Li

I spent some time a week ago with Microsoft discussing their new online classifieds service, code named “Fremont”, which is in internal testing now. While the news is out there, I thought I’d provide my take on how this differs from – and in my opinion, is better than -- Google Base. I do this with one HUGE caveat – both of these services are brand new and beta, with Fremont not even available yet.

First, a quick description of Fremont. It looks and acts like a classic online classifieds site. A list of linked categories is on the front page and users can browse or search through the listings. A key difference though is that the listings are turbo-charged – as the poster, you can control who can see them, from everyone to just a select group of people on your MSN Messenger buddy list. If you choose the latter, the next time one of your privileged buddies signs into Messenger, they’ll see a little alert that says you have a set of golf clubs for sale. The categories include the usual suspects – jobs, homes, apartments, cars, and one thing that caught my eye, tickets.

That’s because one of my favorite uses of Craig’s List is to find last minute event tickets to hot shows. I also sometimes find myself in that seller situation – and I would highly prefer to sell or even give away tickets I can’t use to friends than to strangers from Craig’s List. The same goes with clothing – I don’t want to go through the hassle of selling some of used but still very nice clothes online, but I wouldn’t mind organizing an online clothing swap with my girlfriends.

The Microsoft approach reminds me of what Tribe.Net was (is?) trying to do in their effort to socialize classifieds but with one major difference – Microsoft leverages the social network that already exists in a user’s buddy list and address book.

So I look at Fremont and I see a really nice service shaping up. The classifieds interface is familiar – each category has the expected search fields (number of bedrooms in housing, make and year in autos, etc.) and the opening page lays out all of the options in a simple manner similar to Craig’s List’s austere list of links.

Now compare that to Google Base. Honestly, can you imagine your average user trying to make heads or tails out of it? Don’t get me wrong – I love Google Base because of the audacious potential it represents in terms of creating new content for the Web. But in terms of a classifieds service, it will take a lot of application development to get it to the point where the average Joe will be able to use it.

One last point about Fremont – it’s being built on top of the new Windows Live platform, which has as one of its core tenants giving developers the ability to build their own applications. Now this is one of the potential benefits of Google Base as well, but I’d put my chips down in favor of Microsoft actually pulling this one off. Microsoft has a well supported developer network and has come a long way in winning their trust through efforts like Channel 9. Granted, that trust is far from universal but it’s a start.

And on a related note -- where is Yahoo's classified service in this discussion? While general merchandise categories are free, the key top categories (jobs, homes, and cars) are all paid rvices. As it is to be expected it will take a while for Yahoo! to come to grips with its legacy paid online classifieds business model, especially its HotJobs service.

By Charlene Li

I’ve been in touch with Konstantin Guericke, co-founder of LinkedIn, over the past few days about the dual announcements they made today to 1) enable network-wide searching, and 2) charge for some LinkedIn Groups features.

My first reaction to the first announcement was that this was about time. LinkedIn’s value is that no other job site – Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs – has the quality network that LinkedIn does. And the reality is recruiters were trolling the LinkedIn network for leads, thereby reducing the quality of the experience for those of us trying to build a quality network. (SiliconBeat's Matt Marshall has more details on how it will work.)

So why shouldn’t LinkedIn monetize that network? A key aspect of the service is that all profiles available to recruiters will be anonymous, which is essential in maintaining trust in the service. Also, I’m assuming that there will be the opportunity to opt-out of being included in the recruitment service.

The second announcement also made a lot of sense – it’s somewhat confusing because it sounds like groups will have to pay up to $5,000 a year to host a private group on LinkedIn. The basic service remains free – but if a group wants their logo to appear on member’s profiles, they have to pay a fee based on the number of members. Very smart -- LinkedIn just created a brand advertising revenue stream!

So kudos to Konstantin and his team! 

By Charlene Li

Yahoo! announced today that its job service, HotJobs would be crawling company Web sites for job listings and adding those listings to its “index” of jobs. One the surface, this seems silly – why would they want to cannibalize the service’s main source of revenues, paid jobs?

I spoke with Dan Finnigan, who runs HotJobs, about their plans. He said that the #1 goal for HotJobs and Yahoo! is to provide a comprehensive job search experience. They were noticing that consumers were starting to conduct job-related searches on the general Yahoo! search pages, and advertisers were buying up job-related keywords. According to Dan, Yahoo!’s long term plan is to have another tab appear on search.yahoo.com for “Jobs”, in much the same way vertical search engines already exist for shopping and local searches. Job listings would also appear in general search results.

The twist is that HotJobs plans to put the paid listings first in the search results, and first in the integrated search listings. As anyone knows from general search results, it’s rare that people will venture beyond the first few pages of a search results. Here’s an example of a search for “RSS” in San Francisco – when I did this search, there were a total of 41 jobs, with 31 of them featured listings. Those ten “scrapped” listings came from just two companies – Juniper and Ask Jeeves – but I fully expect to see a more comprehensive list.

The “free” listings will benefit jobseekers who are looking for very specific jobs or jobs in locations that don’t have a lot of online recruitment listings (here’s another example). The secret to Yahoo’s revenue preservation is that if a company has problems filling a position, they will feel the need to pay for placement in the featured listings – as well as access to resume database.

So Yahoo! really doesn’t have much to lose in terms of revenues – and they also have a great deal to gain as they are third place player to Monster and CareerBuilder. Also, I think Yahoo! sees the writing on the wall with meta-job search engines like Indeed.com, Simply Hired, and WorkZoo that were scraping all of the major job search engines. And Google isn’t far behind – although they have made no announcements, I fully expect Google to unveil a comprehensive classifieds search engine within the next few months.

It's inevitable that job listing prices will feel pressure, yet Yahoo! has alternative ways to monetize job listings throughout its network.

Can Monster and CareerBuilder follow in Yahoo!'s footsteps? It's unlikely as they both lack the greater context of a general portal and search site -- they aren't in as good a position to make up any shortfall in revenues that will inevitably result.

The problem with Yahoo!’s approach is that it’s crawling company job sites and building a great index – but it simply means more jobs for candidates to apply to and get no reply.

Enter Jobster. I first spoke with Jobster in March and was impressed by their business model, which is combination of applicant tracking system and social networking. Recruiters can send out an email to their contacts notifying them about a job opening, and those contacts in turn can either apply for the job or forward it on to other people. The beauty of Jobster is that it turbo-charges one of the top ways people find jobs – referrals. One sure way to make sure that you get an interview is to have someone walk your resume (OK, it’s really done via email) to the hiring manager. While I don’t expect Jobster to beat the job boards in terms of quantity of jobs or number of job seekers, I do expect that candidate quality and the candidate experience will be extremely high.

Now it turns out that Jobster is buying WorkZoo, which it announced today as well. I spoke with Jobster CEO Jason Goldberg on Monday, and he described their vision of how WorkZoo will allow users to expand their search beyond their network of jobs on Jobster proper and see “every” job. WorkZoo has its cut out for them – in previous testing, they lagged significantly in their parsing ability compared to Indeed.com and Simply Hired. But this combination of Jobster and WorkZoo makes sense as a combined service – it’s also is similar to the partnership that currently exists between professional social networking service LinkedIn and Simple Hired.

I expect that Yahoo! will eventually loop its social networking service into HotJobs and enable a similar type of service to Jobster, especially since it also has an applicant tracking service for small and medium sized businesses. But one thing it should do is to be truly comprehensive and scrap jobs from its competitors, Monster, CareerBuilder, and other newspaper sites. Otherwise, they leave the door open for Google, Indeed.com, and Simply Hired.

Indeed.com and Simply Hired will have a hard time fighting off giants like Yahoo! and Google and are ripe acquisition targets. MSN will likely take a look at Indeed.com and Simply Hired, as will Google, but they are likely to pass and build their own crawlers as Yahoo! did that will integrate better into their core search algorithms. The most likely buyers for these sites include IAC/InterActive Corp, which also owns Ask Jeeves and social networking site ZeroDegrees, as well as newspapers chains who are not CareerBuilder affiliates (like MediaNews Group or Belo) who are struggling for relevance in the online recruitment space.

Monster may dust off some of the technology it has lying around from its Flipdog acquisition, but it's likely dated. CareerBuilder and its newspaper partners are still coming to terms with the cannibalization of print classifieds -- it will have a hard time understanding that even online recruitment revenue is coming under assualt.

The result: Look for the emergence of what I call "social classifieds", where the ability to connect people to each other will be the hallmark of success. In a world where listings are a commodity and easily crawled, the true differentiation will be the quality of the experience. It is for this reason that Jobster's model will ring true, and why Yahoo! 360 and MSN Spaces will be core to the success of their respective classified strategies. Google may have the best technology around, but it's Achilles’ heel will be its lack of a robust social network.

Humorous aside:

What I didn’t realize (thanks to my technology blackout) was that the Yahoo! Job Search service had already been quietly launched the previous week, and in fact, had been written about in Yahoo’s own search blog. So throughout Monday afternoon, I kept getting phone calls from reporters and industry colleagues who were sniffing around for some sort of “big breaking classifieds” news. I was told by Yahoo! that the news was embargoed until Tuesday morning, which I steadfastly insisted on honoring. It was only later after business hours that I embarrassingly discovered that everyone already knew about it and that Yahoo! was just formally announcing it. Lesson learned – read the RSS feeds asap after vacation!