BlueRoof: A Perfect Example of Real Estate Agents Adjusting to Technology

It’s easy to become jaded when you work in the real estate industry, especially when you work in the web application development side and things all start to look the same. Well, I’m pleased to announce that I had an “Oh ____!” moment today. (now, I know many of you might have known about them before, but I didn’t)

BlueRoof.com is a real estate tool for people located in the Salt Lake City, Nevada area. Users can find property via the MLS or FSBO listings, they can sell a home through BlueRoof, or they can get a mortgage. You can search for homes and timeshares on their integrated Google Map, find a contractor, rate your neighborhood and there is a wealth of content on each listing. That’s not the exciting part – it’s kind of expected.

Exciting point #1 – Buyers/Sellers making money

Taking a page out of Redfins book, BlueRoof offers their customers a way to make money:

“Say you listed with another agent asking for 6% and your home sells for $300,000. You would then owe the agent about $18,000 in agent fees. With BlueRoof, you only need to pay 1%, which if your home sold for that same $300,000, you would only need to pay out $3000. Then if you offered an agent only 2%, your total agent fees would only come to $6000. That’s a $9000 savings in working with BlueRoof than with another agent!”

Exciting point #2 – Their design is INCREDIBLE

I’m not usually a fan of flash, but BlueRoof has really done a great job of integrating a great deal of it into their site without it getting in the way of functionality. The site has a fresh feel, is easy to read, navigates well and makes the user experience a real “BlueRoof experience”.

Since I’ve never been to Salt Lake City, I can’t really say how big BlueRoof is there. If nothing else, they’ve shown a great deal of initiative online, and they deserve credit for the phenomenal product that they’ve put out.

Here are a couple screenshots:

NOTE: It’s worth noting that the reason I ever found BlueRoof was due to their blog, and the fact that they made a comment on my blog. If you’re really interested in marketing your product, you better learn how to blog and jump on the bandwagon.

A quote from BlueRoof’s blog:

“We have been Realtors for over 13 years and those clients bought a home from us last last year. The website and company, BlueRoof, launched a few weeks ago, but this is one the things that makes BlueRoof different from many of the other new broker models- we are not tech guys who are getting into real estate- we are Realtors using technology to empower the consumer.”