By Dennis Taylor
Hollister
– A powerful new online tool launched by Mainstreet Media Group
promises to change the way real estate in the South Valley area is
bought and sold.
Hollister – A powerful new online tool launched by Mainstreet Media Group promises to change the way real estate in the South Valley area is bought and sold.
Called “whoboughtwhat.com,” the new Web site enables users to easily search neighborhoods or prospective neighborhoods to not only see the prices of recently sold homes, but also news about who the sellers and buyers are. If the user is more interested in pricing, recent sales can be sorted by price ranges, by date of sale going back to 2002, or by specific street.
The site is searchable in a number of markets in which Mainstreet operates. Mainstreet is the parent company of the Gilroy Dispatch, Hollister Free Lance, The Weekend Pinnacle and the Morgan Hill Times, and other California publications, including the Amador Ledger-Dispatch, Amador Direct, Del Mar Times, La Jolla Light, Solana Beach Sun, Alternate 101, Santa Cruz Good Times, Carmel Valley Leader, Rancho Santa Fe Record and the Ramona Sentinel.
The decision to launch the site was an extension of the increasing overlap of newspapers and the Internet, said Steve Staloch, senior vice president and COO of Mainstreet Media Group.
“The Web site compliments the proven strength of real estate advertising appearing in our newspapers and our monthly real estate magazine, Mainstreet Homes,” Staloch said. “Like Mainstreet Homes, which is distributed throughout Santa Clara, San Benito, Monterey, Merced, Madera and Santa Cruz counties, and published online, whoboughtwhat.com allows readers and advertisers to reach a worldwide audience planning to move to the markets we serve.”
The site is easily navigable. From the home page, the user can click on any of the California regions covered by Mainstreet Media, and a number of news items of home sales in that region is displayed. By clicking on the news item, the user is then taken to a page detailing information about the new owner of the home, including information such as employment, education and other real-estate holdings, as well as a Google satellite image of the home to provide a birds-eye perspective of the property.
The data provided on home sales are reported directly from each county’s real-estate transaction records, while the new owners are researched online by Main Street Media staff. The geographic reach of the Web site adds to the power of this information by providing comparable selling prices by neighborhoods, cities, counties and other regions in the state. It truly is the real estate site for inquiring minds, Staloch said.
“It becomes even more dynamic by encompassing numerous markets where the number of potential buyers and sellers exponentially increases,” he said.
But while the tool itself is a boon to anyone in the home-buying market in California, the underlying data allows users a level of confidence that the prices they see are based on the most up-to-date data available, a distinction Staloch said is important in making the right real-estate decision.
“We tested the credibility of Zillow’s online housing appraisals and found our data to be far more accurate,” Staloch said. “It’s due to the fact that our comparables are based on actual selling prices in our market, and not derived using a formulated approach to pricing.”
Staloch’s vision for future site enhancements includes a number of portals that homebuyers deem important when choosing a neighborhood, such as the latest performance scores from nearby schools, as well as a crime statistics. Also in development is a do-it-yourself appraisal feature that will provide home owners an approximate valuation of their home. “How much is my house worth”? is one of the first questions asked in the decision to sell your home and this service will help coach the seller to pick up the phone a call a professional real estate agent,” Staloch said.
Ultimately, though, it will be the news about who bought and who sold their home that will drive traffic to the site.
“It will be the news about who bought and sold the home that draws people in,” Staloch said. “From there, the host of truly unique features will provide the analytical information needed to make smart home buying and selling decisions.”
