SHACKYACK.COM

What is ShackYack.com?

ShackYack.com is a website that allows homebuyers to find, at a glance, properties for sale in the greater Los Angeles area. It then allows them to comment on that house or the area. It makes home-hunting seem more like shopping, or a dating site even. I’ve tried to make it fun.

What makes this site different from all the other real estate sites popping up?

As a realtor, I found that homebuyers looked for houses in very basic ways – they knew their maximum price, and they knew what part of town they wanted. Everything else was pretty soft. So I created a map that loads all the results of a basic search instantly. Users can adjust price sliders and change the type of property they want. Furthermore, what they see is not just dots on a map: the darker icons are more expensive, the lighter ones cheaper, and each type of property looks different. So a user looking for a house or a duplex in Hollywood can see them at a glance. Then the best part. Homebuyers can do online what they’ve been doing privately for years: comment on the house itself, the realtor, the location, anything. We’re the first, and user feedback in real estate is here to stay.

Are these Multiple Listing Service (MLS) listings?

The results are actual, updated listings from the Los Angeles, Valley, Pasadena, and Glendale MLS systems. It's the same informaiton that I use as a realtor - I'm just making it available to the public in a new format.
Who are you?

I’m a Los Angeles realtor. I am 30 years old and have been in the business for 5 years. Last year my team and I sold over 100 houses. I have appeared as the Los Angeles real estate expert on HGTV’s “National Open House” and “My House is Worth What?”. I received lots of press a few years back for listing a home for $1.

What prompted you to create this site?

For all the hype about online home search, the reality for homebuyers is much different. Try to find a home online and you will get incomplete inventory (trulia.com), awkward interfaces (homepages.com), outdated data (realtor.com), or be forced to give up your personal information so a salesperson can contact you (homegain.com et al). Furthermore, most search interfaces are stuck in 1998 – drop down menus specifying all kinds of irrelevant data like maximum bathrooms, search buttons, and results stacked in order of price or days on market. The worse part is searching by area: zip codes or city names are very limiting, especially in metro areas like Los Angeles.

After seeing what was out there I decided to create one that I would use myself, and ShackYack.com is just that.

Is this a site that lets people buy houses as well as look at them?

No. It’s a shopping and community site for real estate. If users want to buy, that’s where we come in. We fully expect ShackYack.com to become the most used real estate portal in Los Angeles. People love to talk about real estate, and this is the only place they can do that.

How do you think Realtors will respond to public comments on their houses?
Realtors can be a traditional bunch. When I listed a house for $1 a few years ago, I got so many confused called (“I don’t get it”) and not a few offers for $1. So I anticipate some chaos at first. In the end, I figure it will be like amazon.com – for the most part, public comments are accurate. There are a lot of amateurs in this business, and some biting public comments could be just the right medicine (“Left four messages for agent and have yet to hear back.”). The professional realtors, the ones committed to customer service, whose MLS remarks are accurate and free of typos, who actually market their properties, who do a great job…they’ll love it as much as the buyers.

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