Real-Estate.com

Author: Kaitlyn Short

There are so many real estate searching companies for customers to choose from when they begin their search for a new place to live. Real-estate.com offers these customers a unique approach to providing their listings. They partner with third-party real estate agencies to gather their information for their listings. The Real-estate.com team works to provide quality descriptions about all kinds of properties to help their customers find their dream home.  

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The Good

• Neighborhood information
• Map

For many customers, what the surrounding neighborhood has to offer the customer is almost as important as the home itself when they are deciding where they would like to move to. Not many real estate search sites give their customers a lot of information about those areas. This is definitely not the case for the listings Real-estate.com shows their customers; these listings have a lot of detailed information about the neighborhoods. For most of the listings there is a map of the property, on this map the customer can select certain amenities they would like shown. These amenities include:

• Schools
• Transit routes
• Restaurants
• Night life
• Home services
• Local services
• Shopping
• Active life
• Arts and Entertainment

When the customer decides which type of amenity they would like to see, it is marked on the map. This way the customer can see how close (or far away) each of these types of things are, they can zoom out on the map as far as they want to see what is available. On this map the customer can see the value of the surrounding homes; the customer can also have the homes that are recently sold on the map along with the amenities. This is a big added bonus so that customers can see what the typical home in the neighborhood they are looking in is valued at. This map is a great addition to any real estate listing to keep so much information in one spot. It is also beneficial because the customer can choose what they do want to see and what does not matter to them in their search.

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The Bad

• Third-party sites

Customers who wish to use Real-estate.com in order to search for a new place to live will have to be okay with using third-party sites to really get the information they want. The main purpose of Real-estate.com is to gather all types of listings from across the country into one place for customers to be able to browse available properties anywhere they want to move. In order to complete this task, Real-estate.com has chosen to use real estate agencies and independent agents to find these listings. As the customer chooses an area that they would like to search for a new home in, they are re-directed to a separate website that will contain those property listings. These listings are very complete and have a lot of good information in them, so that is not the issue with having these separate pages. The issue is only if the customer would like to stick with Real-estate.com and not have to work with a third-party and their practices. For example, there are no ads on Real-estate.com but there are some ads on some of the websites that house their listings for certain areas. This is only a minor issue though and would not be an problem for many of their customers. More than anything, the use of real-estate.com seems to be irrelevant since the customer cannot find any listings on their actual website. There doesn't seem to be any reason for the customer to use real-estate.com and should instead just go straight to the third party agencies for the listings.

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The Bottom Line

Real-estate.com does not seem to offer their customers much more than being a bridge to the third party agencies that have the property listings. The listings through these third parties are very detailed and provide a lot of valuable information to the customers. They really stand out in their community and neighborhood descriptions, which help the customer understand the area without having to physically visit right away. It seems that the customer could skip the bridge and go straight for the third party websites to get the listings a lot quicker.