10 Nov User Feedback Is Key For New Real Estate Site

The growing popularity of user review networks such as Yelp and Urban Spoon have sparked the interest of entrepreneurs in industries other than the restaurant industry.  The very new YourPlace.com claims to be the Yelp of real estate and its early impressions has a lot of industry professionals agreeing.

YourPlace.com is a network driven almost entirely by user feedback and reviews that is a lot like Yelp.  The idea is to have users or residents contribute insightful information on an area’s schools, markets, safety, and overall quality of life.  According to the Inman.com article reporting on YourPlace.com, the aim of this new site is to add candid reviews of an area for those seeking to buy a home.

Each area on YourPlace.com is broken down into multiple tabs including schools, neighborhoods, and market information.  The market information tabs includes useful information including media prices for the area and demographic information on current residence including income levels.  Users of the site can contribute their own opinions on how they see the market to help those looking to buy in the area.

The idea behind YourPlace.com is to eventually have most of its content generated by real estate agents considering their wealth of knowledge for the market and area in review.  This would only be the starting point of the conversation though as users would hopefully chime in and reinforce claims or offer a more realistic review.

The site’s owner, Brian Wilson, seems to be the most concerned about user contributions.  This is where I question how successful the site will be.  It will no doubt be useful to home buyers just as long as individuals in the community besides real estate agents participate.  Is there really an incentive for them to take part?

I think the site is an excellent idea as it crowd sources information from individuals other than agents.  This combined with other social media network integrations could make this a credible source for homebuyers.  With only three areas currently unlocked for use on the site we will have to wait and see what kind of user involvement will be generated.  Like I said before, interaction is key.