Fri 6 Apr 2007
How much is the house on aisle 4?
Posted by Dave Kaufman under Blogs , Informational , Mobile , Shopping , Software“Barcodes for houses?” Everyone’s been shopping a big box, where the cashiers are miles from you in the front of the store, the employees are all on their 2 hour lunch break at the same time no where to be found and you need to know how much this Transformers: The Movie: The Board Game is for your nephew. So what did the big boxes install, mobile scanners. Basically you walk up scan the barcode of your item and it reads or announces the price.
Well Housefront just made price-checking a home easy. Even better is they allow you to do it when you need to: checking house prices with your mobile is the perfect application. (USA only for now). I mean how often are you out and see a for sale sign but don’t have your computer with you? Using it was simple.
As Lifehacker notes:
…just text the street address to HOUSE (46873). In a minute you’ll get back a text message listing the year the house was built, the square footage, the number of baths/bedrooms, and the estimated price.
Lifehacker and Techlife also agree that it is much easier than Zillow’s mobile app for the same purpose. I will take it one step farther. Housefront provided way more information in the SMS reply. Now the real question is accuracy, input a home you know and let us know how accurate they are?
Update 1: Housefront blogged about another cool feature today. Automated search history. Basically by using their service via texting your mobile number creates an account of all the homes you viewed while you were out house shopping. When you get back to your PC all the data from your searches are saved for your research/browsing.
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April 6th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
WTF?? This lists my name as the owner of my house. The whole world can see this?? How can this be for real?
April 6th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
@Ann - First I assume you are the owner? The reason the world can see this is it is a matter of public record. Freedom of Information Act is my guess.
You want to be scared? Just wait until someone creates a reverse lookup interface so that you can type in your name and pull all up your past and present ownership interests.
April 7th, 2007 at 7:07 am
I tried my house and it came back spot-on. It was off by 1 bathroom but I think that is because the last owners added it without pulling a permit.
April 8th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
ann - If you dont like your name showing up in public records you can file whats called a “land trust.” This will stop your name from showing in public records. It also has some other planning uses that could be helpful for you. Google land trust to learn more.
April 9th, 2007 at 6:52 am
I’m a real estate agent and yes, the sales amount, #BR, #BA and Square footage is public record. Be aware that in some states the sq ft is very accurate but in others you can count on it being quite innacurate…as well as BR & BA’s due to permitting info not being kept accurately. Also, although the sales price is accurate, the information you are not seeing is the seller’s contribution to closing costs and any contribution to contractors to “fix” or “upgrade” items in the house. Bottom line, be aware that this information is the beginning of the picture, not the whole picture.
April 9th, 2007 at 7:35 am
@Michael - Great information!
@Laura - You make a great point. I would add that the services also don’t always know the improvements an owner has done in the areas of remodeling even when a permit was pulled. Say cheap appliances vs. high end or counterops or custom cabinets. But getting a feel for the neighborhood certainly helps a buyer. Great comments all around.
April 9th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Dave,
I am officially obsessed with this HOUSE deal. I used it at a dinner party this past weekend…priceless! I rattled off all of the home info (sq ft, sold date, sold amount, etc) for the host’s home and had everyone in awe how I knew this. Amazing where technology has gone… You have a great website and I really appreciate you turning me on to this.
Thanks again,
Ali
April 10th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
@Ali -
Thanks so much for your kinds words. Keep reading we have lots of neat things planned.
As for Housefront, this is a great idea and certainly something I added to my mobile’s address book already.
April 11th, 2007 at 11:09 am
[...] After Techlife’s recent article on getting the price of any house via your mobile’s SMS, the reaction was really positive. People love their mobile and getting information on it. Google has had an SMS service for a long time now. Simply send an SMS to “GOOGL” or “46645″ with say “Pizza and your ZIP Code” and a few seconds later a quick text message reply has you eating cheesy goodness, or at least orderinNext »g it. You can also get things like flight and airline information. Google’s free service wants to help everyone, especially frustrated travelers. But today is 4/11 so we will give you two pieces of information on this “The 411 Day”. Google also recently released Google 411. Another free service from the ominpresent dealers of information. Google Voice Local Search lets you search for local businesses from any phone and for free. If you’re in the US, call 1-800-GOOG-411 and say what you want to find. Here are some of the features: [...]
April 28th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
I used it for my home and it was off by about $450-500,000. I kid you not. I used http://www.casaway.com and it came it about $25,000-30,000 off the actual value which is pretty good, considering my home is worth about $1,350,000-1,400,000.
The fact is, these are great tools for general information. But no systems are dead on accurate. Other factors increase or decrease a house from the same house down the street.
But it is a cool toy!
April 28th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
@Robster - Great to have you reading and commenting. You certainly have quite the resume backing you up. I would love to hear more from you.
The site/service you mentioned appears to rely on a database by cyberhomes, is there anyway to access this via my cell phone and text messaging? That to me was the real value of the Housefront service.
I tried Casaway/Cyberhomes on a few homes and do agree the valuations were very different, though I wasn’t sure which was accurate.
April 28th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Thanks Dave. It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it!
I wish that it (casway/cyberhomes) had the tm capability, that would be cool. I should send the inquiry to the techs who are working on the site.
I think that as I mentioned earlier, there is no fool proof system yet. I think that it is a start when gathering info but ultimately you need to rely on other local and market factors along with a solid real estate professional. Not trying to put in a word for the industry, just think that you should gather as much info as possible and put it all together to get the best determintaion on value.
But the wild thing is, we can have comps and all that goes with it, and before you know it, someone comes and offers way more then what a property is worth and there goes all your calculations!!