Your house, my house, their house.
So, it's been awhile since I posted. Actually it hasn't been too long but it sure does feel like an eternity. Blame it on the holidays and my day job getting real busy lately.
Without much fluff I'll get to the business idea. Every day someone somewhere thinks about buying or selling their home. They go through a pretty quick analysis of opportunity and loss, initially. They get the gut on the situation...can I do it now or not, sell, not sell? They have an idea of why they want to move/sell. Some want a different school district. Some want a larger house. Still, some others want to down size.
Here's the issue: In today's market there are a great many homeowners who go through the quick gut-check eval process then decide they can't move either because they think they'll lose money, they won't come up with down payment after sale, there will be no buyers, the process will take too long and be annoying (in and out showing for how long?-no thanks) or there will be no homes available where they would want to move. At the same time there are existing sellers and buyers who are stuck in a puzzle sell game waiting for the one first time buyer who will come along and enable a string of accepted offers (with contingent to sell) to finally take place.
The Issue Opportunity: let's say I want to sell my house and buy a mid century modern style home with...drum roll please...a proper dining room! I go through the gut check process above. I figure out the sell process will be a pain in the ass and someone will try to nickel and dime me because "there aren't many buyers" these days. I also find out that there are no homes for sale in the area I'd like to live where there just happens to be a bunch of mid century modern style homes. Homes that might have a person just like me who has decided it will be too hard to sell thus they never list. -Oh and never mind recouping that drive way I payed for before the housing market bust, right?
The big Opportunity: Wouldn't it be great if I could find other people just like me? Wouldn't it be cool if there was a place for all of the "thinking about it" homeowners. For certain there are others who want to sell but are not even listing because the market is suck, home prices are below high or there are no homes for sale in the areas where they want to move. Imagine a place that allowed those people to find each other before committing to the sell process. -Or a realtor or a showing schedule or all of the tasks that a person should do before putting their house on the market like cleaning and perhaps painting!
Wouldn't it be cool if you could list your home without the official mojo that goes with MLS listing. Even if that meant simply identifying your address on a map with other people who are thinking about moving or would like to move/sell but don't feel they can. Wouldn't it be really awesome to know how many people are interested in your current neighborhood (could be depressing...could be awesome).
The business value proposition: a web or mobile app site that allows people to "list" their property without officially listing and find out about other properties that are either officially listed via MLS or unofficially via this business. What it assumes.. The person is identifying their address as a potential available property but not available for showing and no sell price determined. All "potentially available" or "thinking about moving" properties would be listed on a map similar to google realty maps or hotpads maps. The "maybe someday" properties would be listed along side existing official MLS listings but the icon for the property would be a different color or shape. People could search areas for available properties or "thinking about it" properties. When a person finds a home they either contact the realtor for the MLS listing or the not yet committed home owner listed in the "maybe-perhaps" category and negotiate away.
Revenue: the ole normal website model -Ad dollars. Get specific with neighborhood business targets on the map all sold as reasons to move to an area. -from churches to community centers to restaurants and hardware stores all ads would be map click proximity based. There would also be a local realty play by aggregating potential buyers and making them known it would essentially drive price competition in favor of consumers. Perhaps those sell/buy fees would drop a percent or two or even better simply become a flat rate service. Perhaps for a small service fee the site would allow for or enable virtual negotiation between "already listed," the "want to sell's" and "thinking of buying/selling" people. In this private homeowners could "show" selected homebuyers without listing or making a big commitment to allowing anyone in their house at any time during the normal showing process.
Wooo this was a long one. Hope it made sense.
Enjoy the type-O's. Spell check comes some other day...I am tired. Goodnight!