I took the time after hearing of Qazzoo to get in touch with CEO and founder Michael Urbanski, a veteran Internet developer and entrepreneur. From what I learned in our brief discussion and screen share, the review you are about to read seemed the only logical outcome. The combination of reverse search targeting, new mobile and Facebook integration, and the inherent business model of Urbanski’s service, make for one of the most powerful pain-solvers in real estate.

Stop Wondering – Qazzoo It

If you ever wondered just how many local people near your office might just buy that listing, but somehow missed you, Qazzoo solves for X and Y. Urbanski is all about helping people discover what the next generation of search technologies is all about too. As a pseudo-expert myself, relevance can quickly be achieved when the question and the answer are put in the same place. This is, in a nutshell, what Qazzoo is trying to do.

Fig. 1.1 – The Qazzoo landing page

As you can see in the screenshot below, a simple city search within the Qazzoo system reveals very targeted and relevant results. Potential customers (leads) are presented from my hometown of Charleston. Interestingly here, I originally made a mistake and mistyped Charleston. The system intuitively directed me to results for Berkeley County, which is probably the most prolific (numerically) market in the low-country,  due to the low prices of homes there.

Charleston search reveals a wealth of potential clients

Drilling for Local Oil

Looking more closely at Qazzoo’s interface users can easily target (drill down) into the data for more specific info and feature value. The image below shows several red dots, each associated with another aspect of user search. The number of home buyer profiles is shown (2386 in Charleston County), the notification status (which allows you to keep updated via mail etc.), the actual cost to engage with each buyer (lead), tips for better search narrowing, and from which source the member was derived (mobile, web, etc.). And let me emphasize here, this is all lead research at the local level, not in the far frozen North.

Qazzoo Charleston detail showing many preliminary user features

Continuing your research you will quickly see in-depth profiles that flag your particular plausibility for leads for certain homes in your inventory, for instance. Let’s say you looked, as I did, for a more in-depth profile that showed such things as; Credit, Down Payment amount available, income range, and so on. As you can readily tell, hammering down the buyers or leads you would like to talk to could be vastly superior to buying lists of leads, cold calling, and other generation methods outside of Qazzoo.

As an agent or broker once you have researched the prospective clients in need of your services or listings, next you simply lock down 1,2,3 or 4 shares of that person’s profile. As you can see from the next image, I have purchased all four possible blocks below. What this means is, as a consumer of potential client contact and info, I have exclusive access to this member.

Qarroo Buyer profile showing such things as income and etc.

Search Paydirt – Economical, Local, Refined Leads

The next step is fairly obvious. I have not provided a screen because the access given me by the Qazzoo team is administrative and I do not want to show people’s email and other data in a report like this. What users get here starts with the ability to share the action on Facebook, the buyer (lead’s) email and other contact data, their current address, and any other data the user has chosen to supply. In the case of my subject, they live in Berkeley County in a small house behind a popular shopping center. That last bit of research was via Google Street on my part, but you see the value here. The video below explains fairly well just how Qazzoo can help people at both ends of the sales spectrum.

From here Qazzoo provides any number of organizational or utility tools for users. One can flag (report errors), delete, archive, and otherwise prioritize any user profile. I should not have to go on describing this service much farther. With marketing and sales on the web being all about localization and targeting anyway, the developers at Qazzoo have done the homework here. This system puts commerce between buyers and sellers on the same park bench. People who want homes, can now join agents who have them for sale, for the perfect “win-win” scenario.

Take Away

Finally, and perhaps best of all, Michael Urbanski assures me there are no ads, and the profiles (leads) on his Qazzoo search are guaranteed or the buyer gets their money back pronto. I honestly have never seen a better lead generation idea. I should note here too, that Qazzoo and all its hammered out simplicity is not just good for those hand wringing real estate moguls out there, it is a crucial little walled garden that people searching for homes will find beneficial and time saving.

For once my job is done. Let me know your views on Qazzoo.

According to the news, Trulia’s CEO Pete Flint,  and Chief Financial Officer Sean Aggarwal will offer a presentation at 9 AM to be broadcast via the web. The presentation will also be available via Trulia’s Investor Relations section of their website. Other presenters at the conference include: Yahoo!, RPX, Lexmark, MoneyGram, PMC, AMD, and many more.

Trulia at yesterday’s close – courtesy Yahoo! Finance

For more information on this news please contact Ian Lee, 415-400-7238 (Investor Relations)

Home listings for many of Chicago’s Western and North Shore suburbs are already highlighted on the website, but over the coming months, additional features such as market and community statistics, in-depth listing pages, Google mapping technology, a Sobborgo.com blog that will discuss suburban Chicago real estate news, and a variety of other state-of-the-art web technology enhancements will be added to the site, making this a must-use for Chicagoans looking for that perfect suburban dream home.

As registered leads come into the website, each potential home buying client will be directed to a qualified agent on the Sobborgo.com team who is a real estate specialist in whatever Chicago suburb that lead is searching. Currently, Sobborgo.com is mainly organized by community, but as users click on their preferred town, they will have the option to search real estate for sale by price, or in many cases, by subdivision.

So if you’re a home buyer who has narrowed down your home search to just a few specific subdivisions in a certain suburban community, simply click on your desired suburb and see the subdivisions populate on the website’s right sidebar. And for several communities, like Naperville for example, other convenient search options have also been installed, which include condos for sale, rental listings, luxury homes, and new listings on the market.

While Sobborgo.com is still being developed, suggestions are welcome for what you would like to see in a real estate website. So if there’s a particular feature or web technology that you feel makes your home search easier, fill out the contact form on Sobborgo.com and let your thoughts, opinions, and suggestions be heard! And while you’re at it, follow Sobborgo.com on Facebook and Twitter, and also be sure to keep an eye on the website over the first part of 2013—you won’t want to miss what’s in store for Suburban Chicago home buyers!

The real estate industry will liken this to the deal Zillow and Yahoo Real Estate announced in July of 2010. In that deal, Zillow controls a group of for-sale listings on both Yahoo Real Estate’s site and its own — with ads, brokers and agents purchase from Zillow appear on both sites.

AOL and Move push toward better value

According to Experian Hitwise, Realtor.com and Yahoo Real Estate have been jostling for the number one spot as the most popular real estate website since August of last year. Here is a quote from the Move press release by AOL Inc. Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong:

“AOL will be doubling down on our strategy in 2011. As part of that effort, we will be partnering with companies in areas that add strength to the consumer experience and drive profitability for AOL.”

Overall this seems to be a mute-point, or no win for homeowners. The data will largely be the same, but there is another place to find it. I think real estate news that homeowners would prefer hearing is that average home sales prices across the board are up. Wishful thinking I guess. A much larger question looms on the horizon for this writer; “When will Google enter the real estate game?”

I can almost hear Google's engines rumbling in the distance