Inman ran a special report on Tuesday called, “Breaking Technology: The Latest in Online Real Estate“, that compares and contrasts our product eppraisal.com to Zillow.

So instead of trying to position eppraisals.com as a superior valuation tool to Zillow, Saris is acknowledging that the ranges it provides consumers are the first step in the process of contacting a real estate professional.

Saris’ eppraisals pro will generate leads that will belong to the owner of the site that originates them.

Read the rest of the article.

We’re here getting things set up for the National Association of Realtors Conference in New Orleans (NARdi Gras), which starts tomorrow. Our booth is 2058. In the program it has us listed under our company name “Saris Technologies”, this is correct, though it we should have been listed under eppraisal.com (our product). Disappointing, but not the end of the world by any means.

Tomorrow the program starts up. There looks to be a number of interesting sessions, the one I’m most interested in though is “Marketing Forum: The Top Money Making Strategies in Online Marketing“. You’ll notice that Allen Dalton from Realtor.com will be there, I’ll be interested in what he has to say after his run-in with Zillow a couple weeks back.

Look for more news and thoughts on the conference over the next 4 days. If you can’t attend, and would like some thoughts on any session in particular, let me know and I’ll see if I can make it and write a review. Besides that, we look forward to seeing you at our booth!

As some might, or might not, have noticed the writing here on Realty Thoughts is somewhat of a roller coaster ride – meaning sometimes I actually have the chance to sit down and write some original thoughts (or opine about some other people’s original thoughts). The reason for that is quite simple, we’re rolling out a new “big” real estate product and it’s been crunch time for the last month.

So, what is it that we’re doing? Unfortunately, I can’t say until we actually launch the product.

Ever since December of last year we had been looking at real estate, an industry that we have been creating applications for since 2002. Our questions revolved around how we would take the data that we had and create a product that embraced the real estate professional at the same time as answering a general consumer need.

Playing with large amounts of real estate data is a lot of fun, trying to figure out a simple user experience and a business model that supports it is a little more difficult. We think we’ve found the right path for that though – and we think that the real estate industry, as well as the general public, will agree.

The real estate team is off to Inman’s Real Estate Connect conference today in San Francisco. We’re looking forward to seeing the new products on the market, as well as talking to a number of our clients. More news from Inman as we get it.

As has been mentioned on Realty Thoughts previously, Saris Technologies develops software within the Real Estate niche. We cater to Agents, Investors and the Consumer Market.

While doing research about the Real Estate Investment market in general as well as what investment software products are out there, I have come up with one question. What do our users really want and need?

There are the products out there like Zillow which simply gives comparable data. There is RealtyTrac.com which seems to have everything from a database of properties to comparables to a multitude of How To’s and links to various Financing mediums as well as a way to contact Agents in a users’ area. Then there is the property management and web site creation tools such as Shark Bait or our product PowerInvestorPro.

In conclusion, with all of these variations of Investor focused products going into the market, which ends up being useful to the investor? Maybe it is one small feature from all of them. Wouldn’t it be great to know exactly which ones they are make the perfect app? Unfortunately that is harder than it sounds… so we can all just keep striving for that.

Let us know what YOU would like to see in an investor or agent application.  What is it that you are looking for?

It’s interesting to follow one of the “big boys” in this real estate internet boom. Zillow, came crashing onto the scene in February with a nice website, big VC funding and…ads. Yep, ads. They didn’t really have a way to make money off of their application/website, so the best thing they could do was throw some ads up there. It made sense.

Joel writes a good piece titled, Is Advertising Going to be Zillow’s Downfall, where he talks about how they went from a few unobtrusive ads to a bunch of flashy annoying ads. He’s got a good point: where is the balance when it comes to making money on your websites and keeping users happy?

Every web application needs to make money, otherwise why would it exist? Some, like us with PowerInvestorPro, choose to not have any advertisements and charge the end-user directly. Others, like Zillow, have gone the route of charging the advertisers and sparing the end-user a dollar fee. What they end up paying is a usability-fee, where they have to fight off ads or find a way to ignore them.

It’s a tough problem. As an end user/customer, I want my applications for free and I want them to be uncluttered by advertising. That’s just not possible. Some have chosen to give you a choice: you can use my app for free, but there will be ads; or you can pay $x and use the application without ads.

Is there a right way to do this? I don’t think so. It depends on the application and the user base.

Though Cinqo de Mayo commemorates the victory of the Mexican militia over the French army at The Battle Of Puebla in 1862, we here in the US generally use it as an excuse to party and drink Tequila.

With that thought in mind, we wish you all a happy Cinqo de Mayo!

Feedburner, a company dedicated to creating way for bloggers to get their feeds out, has recently released a feature that allows blog readers to sign up for blog articles via email. So, if you’d rather not navigate your way to Realty Thoughts to see if there is a new posting, you can now be notified by email. The actual blog post is sent to your inbox.

You can read more about the service here.

At Saris we strive to keep an open line of communication up with those who use our products. Why is that important? For a number of reasons actually, reasons that benefit both us and our users.

First, because we’re so close to the building of our software, we sometimes can’t see what the the users see. We can miss or overlook some important component or functionality just because we’re not out in the field every day fighting the fight in the real estate industry.

Second, it’s not just about us “master creators” hidden, unreachable and distant – like a Wizard of Oz scenario. Part of our job is to create a platform where you can interact with us in a meaningful way. Realty Thoughts (this blog) is one of those ways. Soon we will be rolling out our forums across all of our products that allow you to do communicate with us and eachother in a much more open way.

We’re the Saris team. We have quietly been building web-based applications for the real estate market for almost 5 years, and felt it was time to share our thoughts and insights on the technology and knowledge that we’ve built up over those years. This is our blog, our opinions and thoughts on what’s going on. Let us know what you think, feel free to comment and contact us with your opinions – that’s what this blog is all about.