Real estate social network
Are you a Realtor? Have you spent years fine tuning your skills in the real estate profession? Are you an expert in your neighborhood or a specific type of real estate? Do you have access to more housing data than any consumer possibly could? Then you are not welcome at HomingCloud, the social network for real estate.
HomingCloud claims to be like a dating site for home sellers and buyers (or renters) where no smarmy broker is necessary (smarmy is our word, not theirs, although the video above clearly implies agents are smarmy). Buyers post what they’re looking for and magic website robots match them up with sellers selling similar products. It’s what we imagine a website would look like if Craigslist.com and Match.com made a little baby website.
Realtors have been property matchmakers since the beginning of time, and we have wondered why more don’t market themselves as such. To be honest, HomingCloud is using some pretty cool technology that we think would be a fun attraction for a site like Realtor.com or Trulia rather than a separate product.
The company was founded in 2009 according to CrunchBase and it is unclear if they have funding (although we believe they do not given the low levels of web traffic).
The takeaway:
As a real estate professional, you should know about companies that aim to disrupt the space and imply you’re smarmy, but you should also be aware of the technologies they use in the event you come across a consumer using the technology, you choose to implement similar technologies in your own practice, or a mega real estate search company acquires the technology.
The anti-agent propaganda goes over well in odd areas like NYC (odd because it’s not MLS based) or in super techie areas that are filled with consumers that are programmers that believe they can do everything without professional help because they have the interwebs. But the small percentage of consumers with this mentality is shrinking, just ask Redfin who originally sought to cater to this sentiment.
We think HomingCloud could increase their traffic and do better if they cut out the anti-agent sales pitch as the majority of transactions are done with a Realtor, but as it stands, it seems like a lot of work as a buyer/seller/renter to go through what equates to a dating process- how long does it take to find “the one?” Just ask anyone who is currently dating, seeking “the one”… it’s not a fun scene. Take out the broker-hater theory and you’ve got a pretty dang cool site.
