Terabitz is one of the latest in a what seems to be a long line of Real Estate information sites. This one is a hybrid, jack of all trades site that tries to do what a Realtor would do for a relocating client. It's like Zillow and Trulia and Google getting together on the iGoogle site, it's like that, but not. It's simple enough, you start off like you would with Zillow or Trulia, and enter in a property address or city and you're off to the races.
You're then given 9 blocks (one of which is a map) to customize your dash board. You can put everything in there from, Craigslist, Google Base, Recent Solds, Some MLS listings to School Information, Weather, Local Business, Tutors, the list goes on. One big hang up immediately is that they've pulled a list of "Professionals" in the area and used their home addresses as the connection. This is great for a Realtor who doesn't want to mail to the agents, but awful for privacy as well as finding a Professional. This is a huge detriment to those with business address in areas they don't service.
Terabitz works great in theory, but I found the information to be highly unreliable. I'm used to websites getting it wrong in regards to Realtors, but Terabitz gets in wrong in every category except for a few.
I'll cover their widgets here briefly.
- For Sale Listings - Pulls from one of the local MLS systems, information was highly inaccurate
- MLS Listings - one and the same, although a link takes you to the MLS listing site. If given an address the widget pulls from the city, NOT the surrounding area
- Recent Sales - Like Zillow and Trulia, Terabitz hasn't gotten this one down either. In one example, a $225K home was used as a comparable for a $450K home.
- Google Listings - Operates beautifully, pulling from Google Base. There's a filter option, to allow you to sort the listings better. They come pre-sorted by price.
- Craigslist For Sale - I was extremely impressed with this one. It missed several homes and had old information, but did try to pull homes in the vincinity of the home I used to test it out.
- Craigslist Rental - Worked excellent. Pulling up all available homes on Craigslist. Making this a tool to use for rental situations if they add Rent.com support.
- Local Tab - This has your typical searches in Google or Yahoo! like Coffee Shops, Grocery,etc. Terabitz has a snapshot tool that lets you share your dashboard with friends and clients. If the "pulls" were better, this would be a great relocation tool. Below is a link to one, and it missed every hospital, all the cafe's, one post office, most of the fast food places and most of the banks. Here's a snapshot.
- Market Tab - A collection of outdated and inaccurate information. Some apparently supplied by the tax records.
- Education Tab - This is a good one for Realtors and Relocating Clients to use. It offers up the schools and their contact information. The tutor widget appears to not be working.
- Safety Tab - No crime statistics as of yet for Terabitz, but the Sex Offender item worked great, giving names of 13 individuals in Dacula, GA. This tool reveals that Terabitz pulls from the CITY NAME and not the specific address.
- Financing Tab - This is a collection of Calculators. There's also a widget here linked into Zillow. Most of this stuff works the way it was intended. Great for homeowners to get a good feel for what they'll get when moving up. As a Realtor, it might be useful to add one of these items to a dashboard, if you're planning on I'll reserve comment on calculators for another post.
- Misc Tab - on of the most useful tabs. Contains the Weather, Demographics and Local News (powered by Topix). Again excellent for those wanting to use it as their Home Page.
In the end, it's a jack of all trades and master of none. The information is still too unreliable for me to recommend it to all but the most specific of clients and Realtor alike. If the information gathering gets better on their part, Terabitz could be the defacto home page for Realtors and new home buyers and sellers alike. As it is now, it's another in a long list of Real Estate Wiki/Guru wannabes.
Very interesting Joshua! Thank you! By the way, how did you find it?
http://www.terabitz.com/ I guess, I won't have days off- will check this website on weekend. Thanks again
Ryan,
I understand your sentiment, but as a good Realtor the local knowledge and skill (negotiating, marketing ect) are what your clients should be paying for, not information that was free long before the internet arrived (what homes sell for).
Ryan,
You and I are both KW. I don't believe in keeping information from clients. I do agree that as these tools gain in popularity they will start charging us for our own information. Such as enhanced listings - i.e. we'll put your home on our site, but not your information unless you pay. Heck, our own company has teamed up with Trulia.
Luckily, there is heavy competition on the internet and many of these sites will quickly dry up without our free content. Only a few of them have staying power.
I think the key is for us to embrace the changes and understand what's out there. When I post about these services I'm usually posting it in the Active Rain section not the "public" section. If clients are using these tools, we need to know what information they are getting so we can educate them on the dangers. Case in point (as stated in the article) the tax information is usually way off and does not include the closing costs paid by a seller. In addition, their estimator tools would be very hurtful in Georgia, where they are using ASSESSED values for their estimates on these sites. In Georgia, that would cause a $350K home to be "Zestimated" at $240K.
Joshua,
You are right about trying to provide as much informatin to clients as possible. I have six blogs that I use for this. You are also right that the competition is heavy for third party sites that think they can jump in and make a buck. Most will likely come and go. I am just saying that I don't think it's a good idea to give them any more incoming links than they already receive. I have written several blogs about these companies myself. I don't like to spam other blogs, so if you Google "trulia homes for sale" you will see one of the many posts I have written. It's directly under the Trulia sites on the first page.
Ryan,
After looking over the AR referral network, I wonder if Active Rain isn't going to go that same route. I'm with you on cancelling out my returning links though. I think I'll stop that.
Thanks!
Ryan what you and others fail to realize is that Terabitz actually compliments Real Estate agents. They are just an aggregator of listings. When you want more info on a listing it clicks through to your site. Based on Agent sites I've seen Terabitz would only increase traffic to your site and give you more "eyeballs" something an individual agent couldnt do by themselves without spending $$$ on advertising.
Secondly it is a research tool for buyers and sellers what this means to you is that you spend less time researching for your clients and concentrate on more important things. You still get to earn your commission for less work. Granted that will change with the whole real estate transaction being more transparent.
Like it or not the industry is changing you either learn to use to your advantage or you will fail.
Ross,
I couldn't disagree with you more about your take on this. It isn't about the industry changing as that will always happen. It's about the outside forces, that have no interest other than to capitalize on the inability of the NAR and realtor.com to do a better job while making money off of you. I'm sorry to say, but, your viewpoint here is at best shortsighted. We would all be better off (that includes agents, buyers and sellers) by not allowing interloping third party companies to have our valuable information for free as it is not free for us. I have prepared for this by making my internet presence strong enough where I do not need to justify to buyers or sellers the need to use these companies and by doing so I am also able to starve them of additional information which helps keep them irrelevant. The more information they get, the stronger they become. You have a choice; keep control or give it a way for free. I think you should consider your role in the futrure of real estate. There are numerous methods to market properties and you don't need these. If you do, you need to do some more research on how to market listings to buyers.
Also, I'm not interested in passing the buck to someone else to provide the research tools or information that is the value of what a real estate agent provides. It's this idea that can doom our industry more than anything else by allowing people to believe that our information is so worthless we will give it a way.
I hear your arguents all the time and they just don't provide a long term solution to the problem. They are short term fixes and devalue our expertise, value and information.
There is a reason there information is poor and it's not because we are greedy. It's because the information is in fact worth more than they think it is. Giving something away that is of value is not a way to convey that your information is in fact of value!
Here are a couple of other articles you might be interested in looking into:
http://www.ryanwardrealestate.com/WordPress/trulia-homes-for-sale/
http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/ryan-ward/1118/show/
Maybe you should think about this a bit more before you say I failed to realize something!
This article and comments are half right, half wrong in my opinion..As a "IT professional" and a Realtor, I know the background on both sides. This is an "emerging" area that we need to be aware of and eliminate the fear. The fear that these type of sites will eliminate what we do and our potential clients. Which in my opinion, it won't.
If you did not know, Terabitz was created by a teenager. Just like MySpace and many other community sites they were created by the young and Internet savvy 20 somethings. If you think even for a minute that you are going to stop people from creating these type of sites or stop buyers and sellers from visiting them you are sadly mistaken.
The latest Generation that has created these sites and will be using them will inherit the greatest amount of wealth in human history. They have also never known what life is like without the Internet. They want information and they want it fast.
The best defense for these sites is a good offense and that is being in the know and providing the consumer with information about these sites. If you inform them about how to use them and how you will help them interpret the information you will keep them in your court. The idea is to stay middle of the transaction so you don't lose them. These types of sites are not going anywhere and consumers will find them.
Some of these comments remind me of the days before the cell phone, the days before the Internet was even a common place. When people didn't understand the immense possibilities of a gathering of millions of visitors to a particular web site, and shrug that off as "a waste of time" only because it's new and under-utilized at the moment..that's like saying "the Internet is unnecessary" 20 or 30 years ago.
Those that keep an open mind and put themselves out there to learn and to experiment will reap the benefits later on, as the technology and the end user merge more effectively to define the desired end result. Take the time to be on the forefront of technology and learn all you can. In this day and age we all want "instant gratification".
Tina,
well put and I agree. The more exposure my listings have will only benefit me and the seller. Thanks for your comment.
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