estate

In an effort to better tailor home searches to customers' interests, real estate listings site Trulia has launched new functionality that aims to learn from home buyers' interests.

While real estate sites tend to present properties based on basic parameters such as neighborhood, number of bedrooms, and price range, Trulia thinks its new Suggests tool can present a better selection based on users' opinions. Trulia says its proprietary algorithm tracks individual home buyers' behavior to immediately surface personalized results determined to appeal most to users.

Trulia's personalized property suggestions appear in a photo-centric presentation and can be refined by … Read more

Online real estate listing aggregator Zillow launched an app today that aims to help home shoppers and home buyers with their home improvement projects.

Available for the iPad and the Web, Zillow Digs is a free app designed to offer inspiration as well as information about remodeling projects. The free app lets users browse thousands of photos of bathroom, kitchen, and outdoor projects, as well as get estimates on the cost of the actual project based on the user's location.

Similar to Houzz, an online home improvement community that launched a design, decorating, and remodeling app in 2010, Digs … Read more

Tired of the city and need some more greenery in your life? Real estate blog Movoto calculated the cost of buying a home similar to Bag End featured in "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" movie sagas.

Movoto considered Worcestershire County, England, as a reasonable locale for estimating the value of a Hobbiton home since "Hobbit" author J.R.R. Tolkien supposedly favored the lush countryside area.… Read more

Amazon is extending its roots in Seattle.

Regulatory filings made public today show that the e-commerce giant and gadget maker entered into an $1.16 billion agreement with Paul Allen's Vulcan Real Estate to purchase the 11 office buildings in Seattle's Lake Union neighborhood that it previously held under lease.

Vulcan Real Estate put the set of buildings on the market at the end of August. Last month the group announced plans to build and lease two more buildings for Amazon, as part of a $160 million project to give the company an extra 380,000 square feet … Read more

Zillow has gone public. Trulia just announced it was going public. Redfin, another established online real estate brokerage, hasn't announced any plan to go public yet, but it is making news. The site went down for several hours Saturday morning, keeping weekend home shoppers in the dark.

The company posted a tweet to explain its troubles: "We are having a little Saturday morning tussle with our master database; we're working on it and will be back up as soon as we can."

Update, 11:05 a.m. PT: Redfin sent the following statement to CNET, referring, … Read more

Popular real-estate research site Zillow.com now has an Android app, which you can use to check real estate and home values while on the go. The app even syncs with your Zillow.com account to give you access to all of your saved homes and searches, from anywhere.

If you've never used Zillow, it's a powerful service that tracks current real-estate listings, rentals, and even recently sold properties. What's more, it uses local data and its own set of algorithms to come up with estimated values, or Zestimates, of just about any home in the U.… Read more

If you've ever been curious about the price of a particular house in America, chances are you've been to Zillow.com. That's the site that lets you type in an address to find out its estimated sale price (called a "Zestimate") along with details about the house and, in most cases, the exact date and price it last sold for as well as information about property taxes, nearby schools, and neighboring homes.

In addition to sale prices, the company also estimates rental prices and displays rentals in your area.

Curious to know what the homes in your neighborhood are worth? Or how much the current owners paid? Or the square footage or how many bedrooms and bathrooms there are? Snap a picture of a home with HomeSnap, a free iOS app, and you'll get all of this information and more. The app uses your iPhone's GPS and other sensors to figure out which house you are looking at, and then it pulls in MLS info to spit out a variety of data about a home. HomeSnap is so slick and provides so much information that you might … Read more

Google reportedly just dropped $100 million on a Mountain View office complex, continuing its real estate expansion almost as fast as it's moving into new businesses and boosting personnel.

The Contra Costa Times reported that the Web giant paid that sum for a 240,000-square-foot office center near its headquarters. A Google spokesman confirmed that it purchased the space, known as The Landmark at Shoreline. But he declined to disclose the purchase price.

"As we continue to hire it's important to find space for our new employees," David Radcliffe, Google's vice president of real estate … Read more