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.

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!

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.

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?

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.

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

You can read more about the service here.

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.