There's been a ton of Web chatter about Google's OpenSocial announcement last week and what it means for companies and consumers everywhere. What's the real estate angle? There have been a number of real estate bloggers taking a look at that question and coming up with valuable insight. Check these links:

-Google's OpenSocial and the future of MLS (1000Watt Blog)
-Google's OpenSocial and what it means for real estate (Future of Real Estate Marketing)
-What does OpenSocial mean to real estate? (GeekEstate Blog)

Brian Boero's assessment at 1000Watt Blog is particularly interesting in that he sees the potential more in NAR's and the MLS' court. He writes today:

"But what if NAR ceased conjuring a fantastical “gateway” that will take years to build and created a series of APIs -- children of RETS, if you will – that enabled vendors and MLS organizations themselves to inject simple applications into Web-based MLS systems?

"Rather than drawing yet another circle around the outside of the listings world, why not create new pathways into it and let a thousand flowers bloom, as they say?"

Any broker would tell you that for every thousand things that are right about the MLS and that work, there are a thousand things that are wrong and cause much angst, especially when it comes to technology and data flow.

Opening up MLSs is an interesting concept that could prove to work toward a more functional marketplace for brokers. Real progress versus the fragmentation that occurs as developers routinely attempt to rebuild the whole concept of a listings marketplace online.

A Web site -- SFHousePrices.net, details price increases and price declines for San Francisco-area homes. The Web site is in a blog format, with individual posts for each property that chronicle all of the price changes for each property. Price increases show up highlighted in green and price decreases show up in red.

A post today on the site, featuring a property in San Francisco's Bayview neighborhood, shows that the property was listed for sale on May 10 for $798,000. The list price was reportedly reduced by $50,000 on June 21 and then raised $50,000 on Oct. 23.

An as-is, under-construction property in the Monterey Heights area of San Francisco, meanwhile, has gone through some substantial price changes -- the discrepancy, says the listing agent, is the result of ongoing construction, as the initial listing price set by another company in March was based on the post-construction value of the property.

A Zillow spokeswoman said today that the company has been in discussions with the Houston Association of Realtors to receive property listings information supplied by its members. "We are in discussion with a number of brokerages and organizations about listing feeds," Zillow spokeswoman Amy Bohutinsky told Inman News.

HoustonRealNews reported this week that "The Houston Association of Realtors (HAR) may be a whisker away from providing listings data to real estate valuation site Zillow.com," and quotes HAR chairman Rob Cook: "Zillow receives 4 million visitors per month so we would certainly like to have our listings on the site."

The bulk-feed market appears to be heating up for real estate sites -- Point2 today announced that it is expanding its focus for the formerly agent-centric Point2 National Listing Service to target multiple listing services, real estate associations, and brokerage companies and franchise networks. And Fidelity's Cyberhomes.com, an online valuation and marketing site, is also approaching brokers and MLSs to secure for-sale property listings information.

So the "major announcement on title insurance rates" promised by California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner Friday (see previous post) was in fact the launch of a new industry-backed Web site. The site, TitleWizard, is supposed to help consumers shop for the best deal on title insurance (see Inman News story).

To make sure the point wasn't lost, Poizner joined California Land Title Association President Margaret Foster and Executive Vice President Craig Page (left to right in photo) at a new housing development in Sacramento's Tapestri Square, posing in front of a billboard promising, "Consumers will benefit."

Poizner, who has given the industry until 2011 to institute reforms, issued a statement calling TitleWizard "a first step to infuse competition into the title insurance industry."

Photo credit: California Department of Insurance

Jack Dennison, chief operating officer at Realtor.com-operator Move Inc. since 2002, is no longer with the company.

Move Inc. reported in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing this week that Dennison on Sept. 28 "provided Move Inc. with his resignation ... effective on Sept. 30." Move Inc. officials were not immediately available for comment about Dennison's departure. Dennison had joined Move -- then known as Homestore -- as a part of a new management team that had formerly served at WebMD and Healtheon.

Dennison was a general counsel for WebMD, Healtheon and The Continuum company when he joined Homestore in 2002, accompanied by incoming Homestore CEO Mike Long and incoming Homestore chief financial officer Lewis R. Belote III -- both had also served in management roles at WebMD and Healtheon.

Move Inc.'s stock price closed at $2.97 per share today -- it had hit a two-year low at $2.36 in August.

A team of RE/MAX real estate agents in the Greater Washington, D.C., area have launched a new Web site, HomeZill.com, that offers to refund to buyers up to two-thirds of a traditional 3 percent commission that is received on the buyer's side of a real estate transaction.

David Dowies, a Realtor with RE/MAX Choice in Fairfax, Va., who is also CEO and founder of HomeZill, said the site launched on Aug. 23 and is targeting tech-savvy Gen-X and Gen-Y consumers who prefer to perform the bulk of the home search on their own.

"More and more consumers and home buyers are able to find their property online," he said, even before they contact a real estate professional.

The site taps into MLS property information from the regional Metropolitan Regional Information Systems (MRIS) MLS, and the site also features a unique database of new-construction properties.

The URL for the Web site is intended to be catchy but doesn't have any meaning and doesn't have anything to do with Zillow, Dowies said.

Google Maps features three-dimensional rendering of buildings for some city areas. An Inman News staffer noticed the feature in a San Francisco map search. The renderings indicate building shape and height, though the dimensions aren't exacting. San Francisco's Coit Tower looks like a little nub in these renderings, for example, and the infamous TransAmerica Pyramid building appears to have a flat-top (see picture). Nevertheless, a cool tool for tooling around city centers.

• Here's a view of 3-D buildings in Manhattan.
• And in Los Angeles.

If the simulated skyline isn't working for you, Google also has street-level imagery, launched in May, and satellite imagery.

The Real Estate Transaction Standard, or RETS, which is designed to facilitate real estate data standardization and make for smoother data transfer, may soon get a new governance structure. A RETS workgroup has drafted a document proposing the creation of a Real Estate Standards Organization to oversee activities related to RETS. One possible application of RETS is to help multiple MLSs seamlessly share their data with their members.

This week, RETS workgroup participants will discuss and consider adoption of the RESO Governance Policies and Procedures. RESO, as proposed, would "govern the standards development, promotion, and maintenance activities of Real Estate Transaction Standard and any other Standard that RESO deems appropriate."

The National Association of Realtors will set the annual funding levels for RESO and hire an executive officer for the group, "until non-NAR RESO funding reaches 50 percent, at which time the Board of Directors Business Committee will establish funding levels and select the executive officer," according to the proposal.

Under this proposal, the group's board of directors will initially include 11 members, including the executive officer, MLS vendors, transaction management system vendors, third-party software development companies, residential brokerage company owners or officers, and MLS operators.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Saul Klein, president and CEO for Internet Crusade, an Internet publishing company that offers online services for real estate professionals, noted that people often ponder what the nation's multiple listing services will be like in the future. Another important question, he said, is "Why MLS?" It may help to identify and justify which components of the MLS are vital, he said.

"Maybe the future of the MLS is a single point of entry for data. The offer of compensation -- is that as important in the future? I'm not so sure," he said. Klein spoke Thursday during an MLS panel at the Real Estate Connect SF conference. "The world's changing and the real estate world's changing," he also said.

Several MLS sessions at the real estate conference seemed to uproot more questions than answers -- there are many different approaches to reforming the MLS system, including data sharing, creating a massive property database, and the consolidation of several MLSs into a larger regional MLS. Progress won't be easy. There are hundreds of MLSs across the country, and politics, differing geographies and differences of opinion loom among the massive barriers to meaningful change, some conference panelists suggested.

The National Association of Realtors is investigating whether to establish a national real estate data repository that would include volumes of information for all types of properties in the country, including residential and commercial properties and vacant land. Such a system could be a cautious first step toward unifying MLSs.

The California Association of Realtors is studying whether to form a large unified MLS or establish a giant database of property information for Realtors in the state. And there are already examples of regional and statewide data-sharing and consolidation efforts across the country.

And this week, 10 MLSs in California announced a massive data-sharing agreement called the California MLSAlliance that will provide 150,000 agents in the state with access to information for about 2.5 million active listings and off-market properties in the state.

Brendan King, chief operating officer for online marketing company Point2 Technologies, Inc., said during an MLS panel, "The control of data really isn't what Realtors bring as the value proposition to the consumer," as property information is already widely available to the public on the Internet, and MLSs likely do not have a future "with respect to the marketing and advertising proposition."

SAN FRANCISCO -- The RE/MAX Georgia Web site, at www.remax-georgia.com, is the testing grounds for RE/MAX property valuation tools that will soon go nationwide.

Marnie Blanco, vice president of eBusiness for RE/MAX International Inc., said during the Real Estate Connect conference in San Francisco today that the new online tools, which could be available nationally within a few weeks, may help draw more home sellers to RE/MAX Web sites.

The company's Neighborhood Valuation tools are in Beta testing at the Georgia Web site.

Users can plug in and address to view recent sales of comparable homes. The new tools include a Google-based map that plots the location of recently sold homes and provides basic data about the properties, such as the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, the square footage, date of construction and the recent sales price.

A sample online report states, "Your RE/MAX Neighborhood Valuation report shows you: How recent home sales affect your homes value; how your neighborhood stacks up against nearby neighborhoods;" and "what you can do to help sell your home."

There is already a lot of company for online valuation services -- sites like Zillow.com, RealEstateABC.com, Reply.com, Cyberhomes.com, Realtor.com and Eppraisal.com are among a long list of sites that also offer valuation tools.