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Show HN: My Passion

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Show HN: My Passion

#1

Post by kcodey »

Hey HN,

My site http://RealtyPerks.com, just went live a few days ago and I have always sifted through HN admiring and gaining advice from everyone out there, so I thought I would show my start up, and would love any feedback from the HN community. It's far from done but it gets the message across. We have been establishing relationships with Realtors on the northeast and are gearing up to start Rewarding some new homeowners.

Real Estate isn't sexy, and is hardly ever attacked my entrepreneurs, even though its a 60 Billion dollar market. Although recently sites like 42floors have come up and are attacking commercial real estate, which is another vertical within the real estate industry ripe for disruption. (I love their site/concept)

I also find it intriguing that there are so many start ups dedicated to gaming, mobile payments, fashion, etc. but literally you never hear about a real estate start up, but the industry is so antiquated! We still have companies like Coldwell Banker dominating their marketplace. Yes, Coldwell Banker where you walk into one of their offices and see chairs with gold and oil paintings and their agent's don't have email but rely on fax machines.

Enough of my rant, I just wish real estate marketing got up to speed with the rest of the world, and I hope RealtyPerks does just that.

Re: Show HN: My Passion

#4

Post by GoofyGewber »

kcodey wrote: post #3
GoofyGewber wrote: post #2

I like the site so far, one of the things that annoyed me is when your choosing to buy or sell a house. You should add a hover effect so the user knows what they're about to click.

Makes sense.. Thanks!

It's actually a pretty cool idea, good job!

Re: Show HN: My Passion

#6

Post by ezl »

Interesting. Real estate is definitely technologically underserved relative to its market size.

I think this is a play at incentivizing residential buyers/sellers to let you refer them to the local Realtor the first referral and taking the referral to let the user buy things with "points"? If so, I love it.

for giggles: existing home sales 5mm/yr * 200k/house. Assuming a full commision of 3% on one side and if you get 25% as a referral:

A typical transaction could be worth:

$200k * 3% * 25% == $1500 (less redemption value in points, so basically a redeemable user point has to be less than .03.25 purchase price)

If you owned one side of every single existing home sale, that is worth: 5mm * 1500 == $7.5B/yr

How do you intend to reach users? I guess with a value of $1500 per conversion, you can afford to spend liberally on adwords to catch users as they are searching, but I suspect the words in that space are competitive and expensive. Even if you get the a 25% referral on the full commission, someone else is able to pay up to 100% of the referral on the commission in user acquisition costs, so you'll never be able to outspend the actual broker in paid search.

Basically you'll have to be creative with how you pay for traffic.

Which isn't to say its not doable... This sort of reminds me of deal aggregators like Yipit -- they get a commission of the transaction from someone like Groupon, so that means groupon can always outspend them, so you ahve to find some other way to get your leads.

What is your plan?

Re: Show HN: My Passion

#7

Post by kcodey »

ezl wrote: post #6

Interesting. Real estate is definitely technologically underserved relative to its market size. I think this is a play at incentivizing residential buyers/sellers to let you refer them to the local Realtor the first referral and taking the referral to let the user buy things with "points"? If so, I love it. for giggles: existing home sales 5mm/yr * 200k/house. Assuming a full commision of 3% on one side and if you ge…

More or less your on target, our rev comes from referral fees, which vary, and also monthly subscriptions from local Realtors who would "own" their market, similar to how they can own their market on Zillow or Trulia.

Your are 100% correct that this space is competitive and expensive to catch users, and being creative is key, which is why we are going after strategic partners to help with the acquisition costs.

Re: Show HN: My Passion

#9

Post by yashchandra »

Not to criticize, but what is the value from this particular service to someone who is buying or selling a home ? Are you making the process easier or just giving rewards like a credit card cashback etc ? I am asking since I would love to work with something that makes my buying or selling part easier. I want to know good realtors in my area, recommendations for my housing preference (based on factors such as affordability, choices, what matters to me most etc). I do not care about reward points necessarily. Just my 2 cents.

Re: Show HN: My Passion

#10

Post by debacle »

> and is hardly ever attacked my entrepreneurs

> but literally you never hear about a real estate start up

I don't think you're looking hard enough: Zillow, Trulia, 42Floors, Yahoo Real Estate, Redfin, Movoto

I'm sure there are many more.

Realty has poor technology because realtors generally don't utilize technology well. The MLS is a festering mess of non-normalized data, and no one cares because real estate is still very much people-driven.

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