For estate agents, developing feeds for each individual portal is time consuming and should be unnecessary.

Delivering people directly to the full details of a property on an estate agencies own website is far more user friendly than getting search results, only to be shown a less-than-complete description on the portals own site before again clicking through to the agents own site to finally see the complete details.

I am sure that we are not unique in our desire to see extate rapidly become one of the UK’s premier destination for people searching for property to buy.

Both are a giant leap above individual estate agencies selling properties on their own sites. With buyers having to individually search each estate site to see all homes for-sale in a given area. Property search engines work great in non-buyer agent markets like the UK. They even work in a buyer agent market (where there are dedicated buying and selling agents that get half of a 6% commission from each sale) such as the US, but not without unique problems. In buyer agent markets, like the US, property search engines feed to the underlying problem with our real estate market. The reason for this problem is ultimately greed. Our US real estate agents believe they are entitled to a 6% commission despite technology and the Internet making it easier to sell preoperties than ever before. As an agent if I have a listing posted on a property search engine, one such as Extate, I am significantly increasing the chances that I will “double-dip” the sale (or represent both the buyer and the seller) thus collecting an entire 6% commission when the home is sold. That is great for both Extate and the agent, but not for the home buyer that will be paying this agent a 3% commission for buyer agent services that weren’t used. So, here is the “underlying problem”. Agents use the listing on property search engines as bait and give out only small amounts or incomplete data online…why??? to ensure that when buyers find a home they like, using a property search engine, they will have to call the selling agent for more information. Inevitably allowing the selling agent the opportunity to “sell” the buyer on the agent’s services, and thus we have an agent representing both the buyer and the seller in one transaction. And this is the problem with property search engines in the US, or markets with buyer specific agents that feel like they are entitled to 3% commission when buyers are finding homes themselves online.

I enjoy everything about Extate, from the site usability, to features, to core concepts, and now that I have discovered this blog I will follow more closely. But if US expansion is a company goal… you should know that you will have more challenges with our real estate market than simply posting the most amount of data.