FLASHBACK: DIY Web publishing for real estate 1999 vs 3Q2012

​DIY home buyers and FSBOs:  Think about real estate websites you’ve used, from real estate portals, like Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com, to real estate brands, like Coldwell Banker and Redfin.  

  • What features to you like best?
  • What frustrates you the most?
  • If you could design a site to meet your needs, what’s on your wish list for features and functionality?

The Real Estate Cafe is updating it’s website to automatically reformat for any device, from laptop, to tablet, to smartphone so let us know how we can enhance your mobile user experience.  Got any ideas for killer apps to help DIY peers save money?  That’s our mission, and has been we opened in 1995 (watch 80 second video on our new home page).

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Alternative fees for home buyers: Still the “Unfinished [r]Evolution”?

Four years ago, June 7, 2004, Banker & Tradesman quoted The Real Estate Cafe in a page one story entitled, "MLS Policy Statement Fuels Commission War."  The skip page read:

Unfinished Evolution

During the last decade or so, alternative services — such as flat-fee, listing-only or fee-for-service models — have been offered to home sellers, but there haven’t been a tremendous amount of choice for buyers, according to Wendel. 

This is one of the untold and unfinished pieces of this [real estate r]evolution," he said.  Wendel, who charges $100 an hour rather than charging a commission, has been offering a full menu of services to both buyers and sellers for the last 10 years.

Do you think the residential brokerage community now offers enough alternatives to the traditional real estate commission?  What kind of money-saving options would you like The Real Estate Cafe to add to it’s Menu of Fees & Rebates?  Should we bring back our $3,000 and $5,000 flat fees, first offered when we opened in 1995, or continue to focus on hourly fees?

Would you like to see the traditional, two-sided real estate brokerage commission uncoupled so home buyers and sellers can BOTH maximize savings in an open, competitive market place?  If you are not familiar with the issue, watch this 90 second video.  Why hasn’t this happened already, and what will it take to get there?  Your ideas are welcome on the "divorcing" commissions section of our wiki, or in the comments section below. 

See what we mean about the "Unfinished [r]Evolution" in real estate brokerage fees?

Web 2.0 makeover in progress @ RealEstateCafe.com

Added this note to The Real Estate Cafe’s original (increasingly obsolete) Web 1.0 site.  Still trying to decide which content management system (CMS) to integrate fragmented Web 2.0 pieces below.  Any feedback on SquareSpace.com or other recommendations for a user-friendly CMS?

UPDATE: January 3, 2008: Web 2.0 makeover in progress. Please watch our blog, social networking sites (RealEstateCafe & ChangeAgents), public and private wikis, fund raising campaigns (community commission & ASAP), and award-winning interactive real estate bubble maps.  Our latest map, St. Joe 2.0, invites real estate consumers, particularly those with expired listings, to reinvent a misguided spiritual practice (see one minute video).  Watch for our ice cream van turned mobile podcasting studio in 2008.

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