DotHomes' new look

Along with last years name change Byteplay is giving their search engine a more "grown up" approach, but I - like everybody else - is still missing the grass

International expansion of UK search engines

We're lucky to have an exclusive screenshot of Nestoria's upcoming German search engine, following on the heels of its highly successful Spanish version. Although Lokku (parent company behind Nestoria) haven't officially said anything yet, the company is actively seeking employees in Germany and Italy via its blog, which indicates imminent activity in those markets.

Elsewhere in the search engine world, Douglas de Jagger of dotHomes is now claiming over a million listings on its US site according to Sellsius. The ambitious duo see the housing slump in the US as an opportunistic time to enter the market as opposed to a challenge, representing an 'alternative model' to traditional broker listings.
However, competition is big in the US and dotHomes is up against some heavyweights. When Artemi and I last spoke he mentioned the challenges and admitted that if he didn't tackle them somebody like Google would. Zillow, Redfin and Trulia are practically household brands in the US, and they represent strong competition too. But the downturn in the economy is based mainly on housing and I have to wonder how many consumers are likely to really care about searching for property online or 'Zillowing' their house to see that it's now worth nearly half of what is was worth last year? Depressing.
Notwithstanding, Art and Doug are full of energy and ambition and Sellsius claims they have now teamed up with a service called RealtyTrac to integrate 400,000 foreclosure listings into the dothomes database. Positive news for some I guess, however, again, my question is who will be doing the searching and why. Most consumers in the US now aren't in a position to buy, with the credit markets drying up and the investment banks going bust, things are likely to get worse before they get better. The successful 2.0 company that's likely to weather the storm is the one that has the most resources at its disposal. Right now (outside of the 'big three' Google, Yahoo, MSFT) it seems like Zillow is in pole position, followed closely by Trulia. Again, I pay very little attention to the US industry, following it mostly via FoREM and Inman, so I don't know the ins and outs. but if I remember correctly, Zillow is sitting on close to $80 mill and Trulia has about $20 mill and is growing rapidly in traffic and brand recognition. Dothomes / Byteplay have nowhere close to that, but what they claim to have is superior technology. However they don't have exclusive ownership of that technology which can easily be duplicated and has already happened in the US with a company called Roost, launching right around the same time as they did.
Meanwhile, although Nestoria's European expansion has received much less media attention, one has to appreciate the dynamics of the European housing markets, particularly in comparison with the US. For the moment it appears that things are much more stable in European housing than in the US. That may change in some markets, particularly the UK. But Germany on the other hand has been touted by many international property experts as the safest short to medium term bet.

DotHomes (formerly Extate) launches valuation tool

This is hot and they're calling it Statistics, I didn't notice it this morning. First glance is very impressive. DotHomes is offering users the opportunity to compare property prices and "percentage return" for postcode specific queries. The percentage return graph compares FTSE 100 with the percentage return and timelines BoE interest rate changes. So far, it's the closest thing to Zillow outside of the United States. DotHomes have yet to release exactly how the percentage returns are calculated
The DotHomes percentage returns is unique in that it plots valuation data - as given by "interpolated hedonic sold-price data" coupled with asking price data and is not not plotted by sold-price data as given by Land Registry.

"Land Registry data includes no mention of property characteristics. So, if five 3 bedroom houses in 2003 and two basement studio flats are sold in 2004 then obviously the Land Registry average for the area will drop massively. This does not mean that prices have actually fallen. (Also, Land Registry data only runs from 2000.) ... It also rather happily provides property ROI plots (with rather interesting comparisons against other assets)," according to BytePlay Executive and co-founder Douglas de Jager.

The new service is not yet available on their South Africa website, but it's sure to be a hit with property professionals as well as webmasters and especially bloggers as DotHomes allows statistics to be embedded in websites.

Extate changes name

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