Overstock.com Hits Home Run with Overstock Real Estate
Unless you’ve been locked in a cage somewhere, you know that the residential real estate market is suffering through its worst decline in decades.
Some forecasters have predicted that the outcome could thrust more than two million homeowners into foreclosure. Sounds like a tough time to be in residential real estate, right? Not if you’re the geniuses at Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK).
That’s why last week the company that gives consumers everywhere access to discounted retail products in all categories launched an online resource for researching and finding residential real estate, from foreclosed or distressed properties to homes available via short sales or auction.
Here’s the link for the text for the Overstock.com news release, while the page for the new Online Real Estate Resource can be found at http://realestate.overstock.com/. And it’s really easy to use.
Merely type in your targeted Zip Code (or the city and state you’re researching) and click on go. It’s that simple.
For example, within the 84092 area (my home zip code), there are more than 200 homes listed for sale captured from 31 Websites and ranging from a price of $169,900 to $6 million. In neighboring Draper, Utah (the 84020 zip code), there are more than 550 homes for sale.
And unlike the publicly available MLS (multiple listing service) Websites, the “For Sale” section of the Overstock.com site provides street addresses, which are crucial in identifying the specific location for a house or property.
In 84092, 22 homes are included in the foreclosure listing (priced from $234,900 to $699,00), while 84020 shows nearly 80 properties in foreclosure at prices ranging from $172,000 to $1.5 million. Other categories include listings for Distressed properties, Auctions and Online Auctions.
According to Bill Floor, Overstock.com’s real estate director, this new offering “allows the value conscious Overstock.com customer to find great real estate deals” whether someone is looking for a real estate investment or a dream home.
Obviously, Overstock.com is either scraping existing sites on the Internet aggregate the data or it has entered relationships with other companies to do the same thing.
Regardless, the bottom line is that Overstock.com’s real estate search application is a fairly easy to use site that can be quite helpful to a homebuyer or a real estate investor. Hence, I offer kudos to CEO Patrick Byrne and the entire Overstock.com team.
Filed under: Industry News