Open Real Estate Database Group

[greekfire]

I’ve started this topic to get volunteers for creating a new, open real estate database group. The main goal is to produce an open online database of real estate properties that is more comprehensive and objective than anything that is currently available to the general public.

There are countless ways to reach this end and I have several ideas whirling around in my head. But I am only one person and could use some help and input from others. I’d like to get a working group together that with representatives that have experience and skills in the following fields:

Real estate
Finance
Computers (web design, PHP, MySQL, GIS, etc)
Marketing
RE Law

My vision is to produce a system that exceeds or at least rivals what’s already out there. It could be the next Zillow or maybe get bought out by a company like Zillow…so there may be some economic rewards available if we play our cards right.

If you are interested, please send me an email using the address below. If we get enough people we can schedule a meet up time/location to kick-off the process. If you don’t have any of the above skills/experience and you’d still like to help out, that’s fine.

Mat
mathuff at vanderhawk.net

[greekfire]

Part bump, part update. I also wanted to welcome any suggestions or feedback from anyone on developing this.

• What are some things you'd like to see in a system like this?
• What are some of the shortcomings of existing systems already available?
• What are some potential pitfalls that you see in creating it?

We have two people so far as of the time of this post.

[Anonymous]

just found this forum by chance

I have been thinking on the same line for quite a time. Well i dont know much abt US real estate system but i do have certain experience in the following fields (excuse my english if grammar isn’t correct)

Php MySQL ===> have implemented quite a few european real estate websites
Finance (MS)
Engineering (MS Industrial Engineering)
Have my own Real Estate Agency

i have been thinking on the same lines for some time but cant get enough courage to start it. Looked at your post and for the first time registered to any thread :d

Lets get to the juice,

I own a few websites (not developed yet) such as

realtorsalmanac (dot) com
realtoralmanac (dot) com
realtyalmanac (dot) com – global wiki for real estate terms

now what i have been thinking is to implement on one of these sites a Global Datbase of Properties (hot real estate markets globally) and real estate agents online 🙂

It is quite simple actually theoreticaly and practicaly!!! if in the US realtors are already using RSS format for their properties (many in europe are already using) , they all can come register for free on the webiste i plan to develop with help of some ppl such as you 🙂 these can be clasified country-state-Zip wise and submit their feeds of properties!!!

later as you mentioned for GIS (not an expert but very very simple i think) using geocoding and using Google Map API’s it is a few hours work to design and integrate it with the properties database and then get their( the ones who register their property feeds with us) property details direct from their servers 🙂

well there is much to be discussed but very short on time so i will leave my alias email address

petersakir (at) gmail (dot) com

cheers

PS i am on diferent time zones with US i think +8 hrs so sorry for any delayed answers

[PerryChase]

The MLS is a closed database for a reason.. to protect the livelyhood of Realtors. Even ziprealty needs to pay to access the mls databases.

Zillow is attempting something like you describe by allowing agents to list for free on their site. I don’t think that you can improve on that without massive resources.

[Author]

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