The Eagle's View

I've just returned from the Inman Real Estate Connect 2007 conference and even for a tech-hound like myself, it was enlightening.

In the photo here you see the founder/publisher of Inman News (a major real estate publication) having a Q&A session with product managers from Yahoo! Real Estate, Microsoft Virtual Earth, and Google. Sorry for the poor quality, even from the second row a BlackJack phone camera can't capture the energy in the room.

I posed the question to the guy from Yahoo! of why their mapping solution, while very similar and in some ways superior to that offered by Google and MS, doesn't compete with them in the real estate vertical. The point of my question is that sites like John L. Scott real estate in the northwest utilize Microsoft Virtual Earth and Metro Brokers website, http://www.ColoradoHomeStop.com utilizes Google Maps, but no one uses Yahoo! maps and I wondered why.

A side note, I met John L. Scott and he's a very cool guy.

Well the answer from Yahoo! was that they just haven't really pushed into that space yet but we can expect to see something in the future with one of their real estate partners (i.e. Prudential).

All in all is was a great conference and while most anyone who reads this blog won't know the players in real estate technology, it's good to know that the real estate community does.

Labels: Inman

I'm currently at the "Inman Real Estate Connect 2007" in San Francisco learning about new technology in the real estate industry!

Metro Brokers is a platinum sponsor of the event as we are showcasing our outstanding search technology at http://www.ColoradoHomeStop.com. If you have not already visited that site to conduct a home search of the Denver real estate market, give it a look. It's the only map-based search of it's kind and makes it easier than ever to find your next home!

Labels: Inman