Movoto Online Real Estate's Page

OVERVIEW
Movoto.com is a real estate web site that provides a wide array of information and research tools to prospective home buyers and sellers. Movoto aims to be the only web site you need to guide you through the real estate transaction lifecycle. The information on Movoto.com is extensive and easy to find, covering topics such as new listings, open homes, comparable sales, market conditions, school districts, neighborhood points of interest, and demographic data.

The tools that Movoto provides are designed to enable the user to make their real estate process as informative and simple as possible. Embedded seamlessly within Movoto.com’s service is an online agent referral network that serves both the home buyer/seller and the agent. Individuals looking to buy or sell a property can meet highly ranked agents who have been carefully recruited and screened by Movoto. In turn, the agents receive introductions to individuals who are motivated to buy or sell a home in the near term. Those agents who perform well are rewarded with increased lead flow; those who do not are dropped from the network and replaced with new agents. In addition to agent referrals, Movoto also provides ancillary referral services (such as mortgage lenders, moving services and insurance companies) as well as useful tools to help a user get a loan, calculate the affordability of a new house or decide between buying and renting.

While similar information, tools and services are widely available from a variety of sources, Movoto offers a superior user experience integrating the key information needed and delivering the right content at the right time in an intuitive, easy-to-use fashion. The result has been the rapid growth of a vibrant and enthusiastic audience, consisting of over 1,200,000 unique visitors/month, representing approximately 200% annual growth.

Movoto.com was launched in 2006 by technology industry veteran and real estate broker Henry Shao, who was frustrated by how time consuming and complicated it was to obtain high quality real estate information on the internet. Furthermore, he was convinced there was a better way to connect prospective home buyers and sellers with quality real estate agents.

KEY FEATURES
Movoto provides its audience with an advanced feature set that is both compelling and intuitive. Today’s buyers and sellers typically use multiple sites throughout the course of their process. Movoto’s goal is to eliminate the need for multiple sites and become be the single source of real estate information. Some of Movoto’s key features include:

MLS Listings
While just about every real estate site offers information on new properties, the quality of this information varies greatly. Because Movoto is a licensed real estate broker, the Company has direct access to MLS databases throughout the country. Other sites, such as Zillow and Trulia, do not have this direct MLS interface, but instead have agreements with large real estate brokers to provide new property information. Movoto decided to invest the time and resources into direct MLS interfaces in order to deliver a better user experience to its audience. As a result of this direct MLS integration, the new property information provided by Movoto is as current, accurate and comprehensive as possible.

Access to the MLS information, however, is not enough to provide a compelling user experience. How this information is searched, organized and displayed is just as important.

Advanced Search
Searching for properties on Movoto is intuitive, interactive and fun, offering users multiple paths to find the properties that interest them. Map Search is a popular search option, enabling users to see and drill down on the available homes in a defined region. An example of the map search interface can be found below.

Mousing over a property brings up basic information on that property. Adjusting the levers on the right (Beds/Baths/Price) results in the rendering of a new map, without the need to navigate away from the map result or re-enter information into search boxes. Map search is just one example of how Movoto users can access the listings that best match their criteria. They can also find listings via:

Address Search: typing in a physical street address returns a list of properties within a specified geographic radius

School District Search: selecting the school districts you’re interested, along with basic home information (bedrooms, price range, etc.)

Custom Search: allows the user to get extremely specific about the type of property he/she is looking for, with criteria such as age of house, square footage, number of days on the market and size of garage.

The end result of these searches is an image-based list of properties that match your criteria. Movoto’s search capability is unrivaled in the industry and the Company has filed multiple patents to protect the methods and processes surrounding its search capability. A sample search result can be found below.

Property Information
Following a search, users are presented with either a map displaying available homes or a list of homes that best fit the search criteria. Clicking on the property brings the user to a 1-page summary of the property that Movoto believes is the most accurate and comprehensive in the industry. On a single web page, users can see multiple photographs of the home, a map of the neighborhood, school information, local points of interest, and demographic information on the neighborhood.

Neighborhood and School Information
Movoto utilizes proprietary statistical algorithms to provide extensive information on neighborhoods and local schools. Neighborhood information is available on subjects such as race, gender, education level, employment status, household income level, languages spoken and crime rates. The school information provided includes test score trends, teacher/student ratios, racial mix and parent education level. While other real estate sites are content to provide links to education web sites and census reports, Movoto compiles and displays this information directly on Movoto.com.

STRATEGY
Real Estate is one of the last large US industries to be transformed by the internet. Movoto has been and will continue to be a leader in transforming the internet into the primary channel by which real estate brokerages and agents will acquire their customers.

Movoto’s goal is to become a value-added interface between consumers and real estate agents. Movoto adds value for consumers by delivering a superb web experience and by providing trusted introductions to top real estate agents and other real estate service providers. We believe that real estate will always be local and that buying and selling in these local markets is a complex enterprise that calls for expert advice. Some consumers will use internet tools to free themselves from real estate agents and become “do-it-yourselfers”. However, most consumers will not have the expertise, time or risk-tolerance to jettison the real estate agent. These customers will value Movoto’s trusted introductions and utilize the services of Movoto’s network of top agents.

GEOGRAPHIC COVERAGE
Real estate is of course a local business and providing detailed information on a city-by-city basis is critical to any real estate information site’s success. Movoto.com launched its first region, the San Francisco Bay Area, in November 2006. The Company has since rolled out Southern California, Washington DC, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Massachusetts. A rapid geographic expansion is underway, with Oregon, Arizona, New York, and Illinois expected to come online soon.