Google Base, go to the Housing link right on the Google Base home page and list your home for sale for free. This could really catch on. CNN mentioned that more and more home buyers each year are searching online for a home. Google Base is now making it easier. This could force real estate agents to lower commissions or even become absolete. This also dips into the Ebay business because you can also list just about anything at Google Base for free, even cars. http://base.google.com/base
It seems like a craigslist kinda thing. Kinda cool from the quick look I had. Gotta hand it to google they constantly put out neat little things.
If Google decides to take on EBay... they will CRUSH them. EBay is truly hated by many vendors and buyers... Google's version would be free... But with super, ultra targeted ads. Google can do anything much cheaper than EBay... Due to their unique supercomputer and OS. Once they take out a major player... People will begin to understand what GOOG is really all about... And why it's worth $400/share. rm+
Yahoo got greedy and started charging monthly fees for listing real estate and now they are out of the picture for home buying. They hardly have any ads anymore so why bother going there. They have 2 homes for sale in my whole city while Google Base already has thousands for sale and will likely be adding much more as the word spreads. If Yahoo would have just charged a reasonable flat fee of about $50.00 and list your home until sold they would have had some potential.
google has 300 things none of them are worth using gmail sucks maps sucks answer sucks videos not even youtube 's status everythings in beta google compared to yahoo is like a child compared to a professional YAhoo makes money google sits there tinkering with their icon pug
is there any reason that a realtor should earn $30,000 for selling a 500k house? we can sell 500k worth of stock for $10. i think the realtors days of huge commissions are coming to an end.
You seem to suffer from DSS; or Double Space Syndrome. A pathological condition in which the author incorrectly attributes far too much intellectual weight to their web-content, therefore feeling the compulsive need to double space every post. Google Maps and Gmail rock! "Well let's hit up Yahoo Maps to find the dopest route. I prefer Mapquest. That's a good one too! Google maps is the best. True dat, double true!"
A lot of people are afraid of buying a house without a realtor. However, if something goes wrong with a deal, the realtor has very little liability. He has no real interest for the buyer or seller. In most cases his biggest interest is to make as much comission as often as he can. The lawyer has far more liability for a house sale yet he charges just a fraction what the realtor does. Some of the legal fees can be bypassed now by using title insurance instead of a title search. Title insurance in my opinion is superior to doing a search. I think something like Google will be the best way to buy or sell a house. Rather than spending $30,000 on comission you'd be much better off to spend a couple of hundred on a home inspector. Also you could spend another couple of hundred to get a mortgage appraisal done, not a real estate appraisal. By doing a mortgage appraisal before you buy the home, you can make sure that what you're paying is in line. If you end up buying the home, you can use that appraisal to get a mortgage. The internet is slowly making a lot of travel agents obsolete. It would be nice to see it cut into the real estate business as well. Perhaps I'm being cruel, but I see a lot of sales people and such as being leaches on society. I would rather see those people doing something a little more productive. When I was building houses we would sweat and worry just to make a few percent profit. The real estate agent would do next to nothing and make just about as much as we did. I'd gladly give my real estate agent a job to paint my next house, he'll just have to be careful not to get any paint on his suit.
vhehn, You're right. Just like the way discount brokers changed the way wirehouses charge commissions the realty business is starting to change. Funny how it takes a bubble to bring it on. I'm in the mortgage biz (soon be get out, you know the boom is over when the Donald opens Trump Mortgage). We've seen new types of realtors emerging. Realtors who will charge you small fees for certain services. Want to get your home listed on MLS? Well, they'll charge you a small fee for that. Want someone to actually do an open house or just bring buyers to your house? Ok, another small fee for that. The age of huge 4-6% commissions are on the verge of extinction. Rock on. uptik2000