With due apologies to my civilian readers, my content over the next few days will be heavy on the geeky-technology-side of real estate — you know, with the Inman conference starting tomorrow and all.

Tonight’s back-to-back pre-conference events were sponsored by Zillow and Trulia at bars only a few blocks apart.  T-shirts, free alcohol, and bloggers were all in abundance.

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A recent thread over at Trulia Voices* pondered the question of the ROI of adding a pool to a property.  The answer will almost certainly vary depending on geography and price point, but here in the Menlo Park / Palo Alto / Los Altos area and surroundings, a pool is usually a negative ROI investment.

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For my upcoming “most Internet-advertised” listing, I — naturally — want a website for the property. There are lots of opinions out there about the efficacy of single-property websites (see, for instance, what Mary McKnight, Greg Swann, and Joel Burslem have said).

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Michael Wurzer, the author of the well-written, provocative, up-and-coming FlexMLS blog, offers an MLS software provider's perspective on the recent Zillow developments, which from his point of view are yawn-inducing. Given that he first heard the news in the middle of the night after having been woken up by a puppy, he's probably grateful.

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Hot on the heels of Trulia’s announcement that Keller Williams’ listings will soon be added to Trulia’s database, now the company can proudly boast that another giant — Realogy — is on board. Included in Realogy’s portfolio are the giants Century 21, Coldwell Banker, and ERA.

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It just kind of happened this way, but I’ve been fortunate in the last couple of days to meet some of the most interesting folks in online real estate: Marlow Harris (360 Digest), Ardell Dellaloggia (Rain City Guide and Searchingseattle), David Gibbons (Zillow), and Kevin Connor from Docusign. — all of them up in Seattle. Yesterday, back in the Bay Rea, I had the opportunity to meet Travis Chow and Steve Schmidt from Neighboroo, as well as Pete Flint from Trulia.

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I stepped out for an hour….I came back…and the world, or at least my little piece of it, had changed, courtesy of Zillow’s upcoming product release.

Quoting Drew Meyer (Zillow PR), the new product release includes three components:

1. Agents and owners can post homes for sales–for FREE.
2. Added a real estate wiki that is seeded with over 100 articles–and opening it up to the community for improvement & expansion
3. Make Me Move–now ANYONE can set a “dream” price for their home

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Tags: Craigslist, Google Base, Lloyd Frink, Real estate, Realtor.com, Trulia, Zillow

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The good folks at Ubertor took the helm at the Carnival of Real Estate this week, wading through a ton of good entries to narrow it down to 11.  Pat Kitano of TransparentRE rightfully won top honors for his entry on first mover advantage in a Web 2.0 world, a much-discussed and dissected article (see the comments) on how difficult it is to stay ahead of the game technologically these days.

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Maureen McCabe of Columbus, Ohio, has a poll up on her blog about what the best real estate search engine is in her area.  Head on over and cast a vote.  You may well not be familiar with the area (I certainly am not) but you can decide for yourself which is the best local real estate search engine by checking them out.

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