US property portal Redfin has introduced Opportunity Score, a rating system from zero to 100 which tells you how easy it is to get from your job without a car. Built in partnership with the White House Opportunity Project, Opportunity Score is an online tool that helps Americans find homes within a 30-minute car-free commute to nearby jobs. Opportunity Score is powered by the Walk Score Travel Time API, jobs data from the US Department of Commerce, population data from the US Census and housing data from the Redfin Estimate and Walk Score rentals. Available for millions of addresses in more than

For sale by owner...USRealty.com in the USA Online DIY service for people selling their homes USRealty.com has launched free nationwide access to the private Multiple Listing Service (MLS) databases real estate agents use to market their clients' homes. USRealty.com lists houses on all the most powerful real estate websites allowing consumers more control in the home-selling process by choosing their commissions and retaining home equity. The company also caters to the commercial real estate industry with interstate transaction support. USRealty.com CEO and founder Colby Sambrotto says the popularity of the Do it Yourself (DIY) industry has been a driving force

In a recent survey Chinese property platform Juwai.com found Chinese would-be buyers of US real estate rank new homes higher than existing homes. The survey, conducted by phone and online in March Chinese through the Chinese Consumer Support Centre asked participants to rank how strongly they would consider buying types of property on a scale between one and 10. The results show the highest average ranking of 7.3 went to “a brand new home offered by a builder” compared to "an existing home” which scored 5.8 and a “custom-built home” which came in at 5.05.   In the same survey, Juwai.com asked Chinese buyers for their priorities when buying

Chinese real estate website Juwai.com has signed a partnership with Builders Digital Experience (BDX) a provider of digital marketing and sales solutions for American home builders. BDX works with over 1,000 builder clients across the USA and operates the number one new home listing site, NewHomeSource.com. The new partnership will allow Juwai.com, which showcases international property to the Chinese audience, to provide more than 2 million users per month access to new home listings from leading single-family new home builders across the USA. BDX CEO Tim Costello says his company's mission is to help builders use the Internet to not only reach buyers but also connect with them.

Image courtesy of Tech Crunch For the last year, the team at Foursquare has been working relentlessly to turn Swarm into something fun. In many respects, checking in on Swarm is playing a game, and now the company is ready to reward you for your gameplay. The company has launched Swarm Perks and Swarm Challenges, both of which offer real-world rewards to users. Read the full story on Tech Crunch Foursquare makes apps that help people experience amazing things around them - Foursquare and Swarm. The Foursquare app learns what you like and leads you to the places you love

Welcome to the land technology forgot. High-end leases negotiated and signed via fax. Millions of dollars in apartment inventory — in some of the hottest real estate markets in the country — tracked on whiteboards with dry-erase markers. Client histories recorded in longhand in legal notebooks and stashed in manila folders. Multi-family real estate (i.e. apartment buildings) is one the fastest-growing sectors in the country right now. In fact, investment hit a record $43 billion in the fourth quarter of 2015, and multi-family units now account for more than one-third of all new housing. But the multi-family sector has

Image courtesy of Tech Crunch Here’s a neat little add-on for folks looking to get a little more out of their GoPro. The Vitrima is a big metal add-on created by Chicago-based startup Fantem that brings 3D video capture to the action camera. The device features a plastic GoPro case affixed to a big lens with mirrors that split light, creating separate images for the left and right eyes. Two stereoscopic videos are combined into one that can be viewed through a VR headset like Google Cardboard, adding a sense of depth to the proceedings. Read the full article on

Online real estate investment management firm HomeUnion is teaming with the First Guardian Group's Sperry Van Ness, a real estate investment and management firm specializing in retail, office, multifamily, student housing and land properties. Many of the firm's clients utilize 1031-exchange transactions, which enable investors to defer capital gains taxes by reinvesting in income-producing real estate investments. According to HomeUnion, the purpose of the partnership is to expose First Guardian investors to the single-family rental (SFR) investments listed on HomeUnion.com. HomeUnion CEO Don Ganguly says the company can offer commercial real estate investors participating in 1031 exchanges high-quality, fully vetted and managed real estate

planetRE CEO Subrao Shenoy USA-based cloud vendor for online real estate planetRE, says it has added many reputed brokerages and team agents in 2016 for its end to end real estate platform. The platform offers single pass Lifestyle Consumer Search, branded Facebook IDX Apps, Socialite CRM and integrated Transact - Transaction Management. The CRM platform offers email, text, voice, deep social search and integrations, chats, lead management, lead behavior tracking, email and social media campaigns with enterprise reporting. Integrations to transaction management enables real time synching of contacts and calendars. Consumers registering on websites could continue under the same portal to

Entrepreneur and former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo is the first to offer his thoughts on leadership in a new Zillow podcast series Zillow Group CEO Spencer Rascoff is hosting a new podcast series 'Office Hours with Spencer Rascoff' which debuts today in the iTunes Store. In each episode, Rascoff will be joined by a prominent guest for a candid conversation about leadership, management, building a strong company culture, how the role of the CEO is changing and guiding a company in the digital age.  Rascoff's first guest is entrepreneur and former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. Upcoming episodes will feature Citigroup