Independent Brokers, take a look
Want to compete with the big boys? PropertyMaps is by and for independent Brokers across the country seeking to be America’s most complete property search portal- a National MLS.
Their goals are to pull together Independent Brokers and network them, giving Independents the opportunity to compete on a national scale. Unlike MLS Circumventors, brokers are partners and capture and manage their own leads in house, there is no middle man- PropertyMaps is simply your outsourced front and back end developer, and because the feed is Broker direct, they’re using ILD feeds rather than IDX allowing consumers to see the most complete listing possible.
PropertyMaps seeks to be the one stop shop for the Independent as they’re your CRM, IDX, mini-maps, media, consumer to agent chat, community data, and Lead Generation all in one saving you money.
If you’re currently a member of PropertyMaps, let us know what you think!
PropertyMaps.com | PropertyMaps on Twitter
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Consumerism, Geo-mapping columnist
Marketing columnist
Good thought but I don’t see these guys surviving a Google onslaught. Their best bet is to get as many people registered as possible and cross their fingers for a Google acquisition. I do agree with them that the MLS model is on the way out and they will be forced to change or die on the vine.
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Hey Ben, I know what you’re saying, but when we’re talking about ILD versus IDX the real beauty comes- it’s the entire listing in most cases, complete data with combined community data, and a strength in numbers goal, it’s leaps ahead of anything you’ll get with a g-map if independent brokers were to really get behind it.
I agree with everything you are saying, but I believe that this strength in numbers will take place for free on Google and not with a cost on PropertyMap.
To be honest I am not too familiar with ILD. Can you provide any examples of ILD versus IDX to educate me? What percentage of residential buyers do you think dial down into that much detail?
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Hey Ben, I’m certainly not trying to sell this to anyone, but so you know exactly what I know, they speak to exactly what ILD is and show a comparative chart for traffic results:
http://www.propertymaps.com/products.membership
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oops hit submit to quickly, there’s a vid at the bottom, I think its around minute 5 or 6
Very interesting idea, though it would not be very useful unless lots of people signed up. I wonder if it integrates with anyone or any software at this point in time. When are we going to get a unified MLS standard that someone actually sticks to?
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Isn’t this the same thing Realseekr tried to do and has yet to accomplish? They can’t get their act together.
Do we really need a national MLS? We already have Realtor.com right. That’s a close as it’s gotten, but we need to take it back and stop charging agents to get their own leads for their own listings!!! We need to improve that site and take it into the social future (like Trulia is doing).
It costs from $32 to $55 per listing to showcase… Just disgusting. Let’s take back Realtor.com!!!!
Thanks for the link, Benn. I think this is a very interesting and almost inevitable development, and I was just trying to further the discussion (not refute anything you wrote). PropertyMaps is certainly a big player in this and it will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
Don’t think they stand a chance. If you compare realtor.com and propertymaps.com on compete.com – you’re looking at over seven million visitors last month vs. just over nineteen thousand. How are they going to climb that mountain?
Navy Chief, Navy Pride
Ben & Benn,
I think this is a novel idea that does not stand a chance of succeeding.
If you plug both domain names in to compete.com to see how they match up, you’re looking at Realtor.com getting over seven million visitors per month vs. propertymaps’ nineteen thousand. That’s a huge mountain to climb.
Navy Chief, Navy Pride
They are missing the point of an MLS. MLSs provide agents with a medium for which to market thier properties and also to find properties for buyers. It has nothing to do with large and small brokerage. Most MLSs have provitions for IDX and now with the DOJ and NAR agreement VOWs (virtual web sites) are starting to open up. There is no advantage to the average agent in this concept with the exception of giving them one more web site to increase exposure. My independent compamny already exposes listings to over a hundred sites.
Hi Peter,
You are starting to get at the heart of what I was saying. MLS provides agents with a medium… for a fee. Google can come in and provide a unified, national medium for FREE, and more importantly, they have the brand and market share to make it work. At least that is where the signs are pointing at this point. My point was that it will be hard for someone like PropertyMaps to compete with that let alone MLS. Joe’s point reinforces that. This won’t affect someone like Realtor.com. They can just port the listings hosted by Google along with MLS until the winner emerges. I’m putting my money on Google.
Upon reading this I grew interested in PropertyMaps – which I’d never heard of. Went to their site to check them out. They boast a really bitching (sounding) CRM product.
I called to learn more and the company phone number has been disconnected. Further digging …. I went to their Press Release section – and their most recent was June 2008-ish – whoa. So I call the PR contact but her number has been ‘changed’. I call the new number and someone promptly disconnects the call immediately after answering! I call back and suddenly I’m talking to the PR person. Yippee! Happy ending? Not really. I’m very curtly informed there has been a change in ownership. I need to email my request to her – at her Gmail account!
“But,” I protest. “I don’t really have a request. I want to learn more about your CRM product.”
Ryan
Can I double down my Google bet??? Thanks for sharing Ryan
Still waiting for a PropertyMaps callback, sigh. Assuming they are toast.