Consumers starting their own real estate sites

With the launch of each new Real Estate 2.0 site a recurring theme comes up: It starts with an entrepreneurial-minded consumer who goes through a real estate transaction, feels like the process was antiquated, inefficient and/or too expensive and then gets inspired to build a Web site where others fell short. Having spoken to dozens of online real estate entrepreneurs over the last five years, this story is all too familiar. Many online companies grew out of frustration from the founder's own home sale.

The story appears again today with the launch of StrutYourHut.com, a site that boasts "Where real estate gets personal," a place where homeowners can "Show off what your home is really worth!" The free site invites sellers, landlords and agents to list properties using photos, videos, essays, blogs and messaging, while buyers and renters are invited to list the kind of home they're looking for.

From the company's blog:

"Why We Started Strut Your Hut…When my wife Tiffany and I started looking to buy our first home in Silver Spring, MD in 2004 we had no idea what we were in for. We started by looking for houses on our own and quickly found that the market was just too hectic for us to stay on top of finding a home in our range that would actually stay on the market. So, we signed on with our first agent…"

The story goes on to explain how the couple sold their house in 2006 using craigslist, then had to find a new place in Brooklyn, where they were moving.

"Well, we did find a place.  But only after blindly going to look at tons of places.  We stumbled upon a Realtor's office on the street, went in, told them what we wanted, and they showed us a place.  We paid a broker's fee (too much in my opinion, but that's the subject for another post).  If only we had seen all the no-good places before hand, we wouldn't have wasted so much time walking around the city!  And, we wouldn't have wasted all the brokers' and landlords' time."

Thus, a new real estate site is born. This is the founders "Strutting their hut": http://www.strutyourhut.com/05-13529, trying to build community around the sharing of real estate information.

StrutYourHut announced it is partnering with photo and video creation and sharing site One True Media, so that all users can produce video montages and animated slide shows of their homes or apartments. The site enables video sharing from YouTube and others, unlimited photo uploads, blogs for listings and an anonymous internal message center where users can contact each other.

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