M Squared Real Estate — a Washington, D.C.-based real estate brokerage that’s also a provider of technology and new media marketing tools — has developed a single-property website platform that it does not plan to license to other brokers and agents.
The company says the platform, Listing360, stands out from other offerings because it pulls market data and demographic information from sources like OnBoard Infomatics, GreatSchools.com, RealEstate Business Intelligence and Walk Score, displaying the information in interactive charts and graphs.
Each website created by Listing360 is fully responsive for viewing by desktop, tablet and mobile users, and has a unique “.info” domain name that’s syndicated to more than 900 real estate search portals, including Zillow.com, Trulia.com and realtor.com, the company said. M Squared Real Estate said its SocialAgent platform also helps generate traffic for the sites.
The company said Listing360 will be used to generate single-property websites for all listings represented by M Squared Real Estate agents. For now at least, the brokerage won’t be making the technology — a WordPress plug-in that took months to develop — available to other brokers and agents.
“We’ve had some interest in licensing the software … but we’ll be keeping it in-house,” said M Squared co-founder and partner Dominic Morrocco in an e-mail.
In December, Chantilly, Va.-based Long & Foster Real Estate announced the launch of a service that automatically creates single-property websites for each home its agents represent.
Last week, Realogy Holdings Corp. franchisor Century 21 Real Estate LLC announced that it had hired Santa Rosa, Calif.-based Properties Online Inc. to build custom property websites for every listing that appears on the company’s website.
Other companies that provide similar services include Imprev Inc. and realtor.com.
What’s your take? Can brokerages develop tools in-house that compete with offerings from third-party developers?