PropertyShark, the real estate data company that opened doors in New York in 2003, has just announced the launch of a new national listing service for rentals and sales.
Relying on search marketing company Point2’s technology, PropertyShark hopes to position itself as a one-stop shop for buyers, sellers, investors and research analysts. PropertyShark’s listings come from third-party providers, feed partners and Point2 Agent subscribers who choose to have their listings featured on the platform.
Another part of the recently unveiled listing service is the new advertising platform for agents and brokers. PropertyShark boasts seven-figure numbers of unique visitors to the website.
“We know that we were getting traffic, but this now takes us to another group of users,” said Nancy Jorisch, a spokeswoman for PropertyShark. “Again, we’ve always addressed the real estate professionals, and I use that in the broadest term.”
Jorisch said her broad term of “real estate professionals,” when applied to PropertyShark, includes real estate agents, investors, brokers, bankers, residential and commercial clients, and now even more so, consumers.
The decision to expand the national listing section comes out of what she described as the consumer’s demand for more research.
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“We’re seeing shoppers — renters, buyers — are finding PropertyShark and looking for that ability to search. Maybe not taking advantage of research data that PropertyShark offers, but this lets them do some searching and narrow it down using the search functionality that comes from Point,” she said. “From the same website, they can be able to drill down properties they are interested in and take advantage of the data.”
Evolving data company
The website started out as a data aggregator. The data it uses is based on public record, so the values and history about properties are less biased — something Jorisch said is a big advantage.
“It’s not skewed to what a broker might posit versus from what an appraiser might assess,” she said.
Yardi Systems, an investment and property management software company, acquired Property Shark in 2010. Just months after that transaction, Yardi Systems acquired Point2. The decision to bring Point2’s technology to PropertyShark was natural because of the ease of merging the services.
According to Jorisch, current consumers like to feel prepared and educated with user-friendly websites, especially when shopping for homes and rentals. She said that this also helps brokers and agents streamline their work.