Type "houses for sale in Las Vegas" into a search engine like Google or Yahoo and you’re likely to see results dominated by the big names in property search, like Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia.
Try the same search in Chinese or Spanish and the ecosystem is a little more diverse — there’s room for a new player like Real-Buzz.com to squeeze into the top 10 results.
The Real-Buzz.com Global Real Estate Network translates U.S. property listings into Spanish, Brazilian, Portuguese, Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese), French, Italian and Russian.
The result of a merger of Immobel and Real Buzz Media, the operators of the site claim that just a few months after launch, "most major MLS and Realtor organizations now syndicate their listings" to the Real-Buzz.com.
Real-Buzz says it provides a B2B (business-to-business) networking channel to facilitate referrals — even when agents don’t share a common language.
The Real-Buzz portal and retail products are powered by Immobel whose founder, Janet Choynowski, serves as CEO of the Real Buzz Immobel Group.
Last year, Realtor.com launched an international site with 4.4 million listings and translation capabilities in 11 languages, including Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Other players in the international space include Proxio Inc., which operates a global real estate network and translates listings into 19 languages, and WorldProperties.com, the official website of the International Consortium of Real Estate Associations (ICREA).
Using public record data compiled by San Diego-based real estate data analysis firm DataQuick, Inman News recently identified the 10 most popular markets in the U.S. for foreign homebuyers. Six were in Florida; three were in the West (Arizona, Hawaii and Nevada); and one was in the Northeast (New York).
