Can zoocasa.com Upset Market Leader realtor.ca in Canada?
October 21, 2008 by Emma Sorensen
zoocasa.com, a new (and free) Canadian real estate search engine crept quietly onto the web a few months ago.
Will it be able to do what no other property site in Canada has been able to do, and present itself as a potential competitor to the long established realtor.ca (formerly mls.ca)?
realtor.ca is owned by the Canadian Real Estate Association, and enjoys almost complete market dominance after having already seen off challengers including realestateplus.ca, housing123.com and househunting.ca.
At this stage, it is still too early to tell if zoocasa.com has any chance of upsetting the pecking order. The website is only in beta form, and certainly lacks the volume of properties needed to compete.
What might set zoocasa.com apart is what its marketing people call “home search with smarts”. The website incorporates Google maps through which users can view local amenities like shops, schools, recreation parks, hospitals and petrol stations. Added to this is a commute cost calculator which allows users to plug in their work address and find out how much fuel they’ll go through on the daily drive from their new home.
In an interview with blogto.com, Jay Lewin who worked on zoocasa.com for Rogers Communication (a large media company who own the venture) described additional plans for a facebook.com add on for agents.
These extra functions are clearly becoming more popular across portals, and although they may seem gimmicky it might be what is required to gain a foothold in the tough Canadian market.
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- Century 21 Sues zoocasa.com
Last week we reported that Canadian real estate search engine zoocasa.com came out of beta testing with a huge media launch. Reports in the Canadian press now indicate that Century 21 Canada is suing Zoocasa Inc. for scraping information from sites provided by Century 21 brokers and representatives without seeking permission....
- Street View Arrives in Canada
This week Google expanded its Street View function on Google Maps to include imagery from eleven cities across Canada....
- realtor.ca Offers Mobile Snapshots
Adding to a string of mobile-based releases from property portals over the past week, Canada’s realtor.ca has released an application it says will allow users to access a “snapshot” of property listings wherever they are. The mobile version of realtor.ca, the website of the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), has been designed to work on BlackBerry and Windows mobile operating systems. It will allow home hunters to view property information such as price, location and agent contact details, however realtor.ca says it is not designed for extensive searching. ...
- Increased Market Interest on realtor.com
realtor.com, the official website of the National Association of Realtors in the US, operated by Move, Inc, is tracking a trend that sees users spend more time on the website viewing more pages. The portal argues that this shows that users are still searching, and searching hard, despite the challenging housing market. ...
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I found your blog on MSN Search. Nice writing. I will check back to read more.
Eric Hundin
[...] it be able to do what no other property site in Canada has been able to do, and present itself as a potential competitor to the long established realtor.ca (formerly [...]