Interview: Nestoria.Com - UK Web 2.0 Real Estate Search

Ed Freyfogle of Nestoria.Com talks to Mike's Corner about their search portal and what it's like running a Real Estate 2.0 business across the pond. Ed and his counterparts have some pretty strong web credentials from Yahoo. It should be interesting to see how their progress compares to folks like Propsmart and Trulia. Ed is interested in feedback from Mike's Corner readers about their site and has asked for comments positive or negative.

MP:Give us your water cooler pitch about Nestoria

EF: Nestoria is a vertical search engine for UK property. We launched in
late June and currently cover the greater London area. We'll be
expanding across the UK soon. Our team has a very strong internet search
background - both co-founders were five year veterans of Yahoo! Europe.

MP:Data control from MLS' is a huge issue for Web 2.0 initiatives in
the U.S. What are the data control issues like in the U.K.?

EF: In the UK there is no equivalent to MLS. We believe most agents
want to get their listings in front of as many potential buyers as
possible, and Nestoria is a tool to help them do that.


MP: What has been the response from the Estate Agents regarding
Nestoria?

EF: Since our launch we've had a very positive response from both
users and different players in the industry - portals, large agents,
agent directories, housing information services - many of the top 30
property sites in the UK.


MP: You've mentioned that you think there will be a consolidation of
property search resources in the U.K. Who have been the big Web 1.0
players in your market?

EF: There are several large property portals in the UK. The most well
know being Rightmove - they just had their IPO this spring - but there
are five or six others as well. All are good sites. Besides property
listings, these sites typically also offer a wealth of information
about the entire property buying and renting experience and the state
of the market as a whole. We take a different approach. We focus
purely on helping users search for properties, and thus see ourselves
as playing a different role than the established brands. We see a lot
of potential for partnership with the existing brands.


MP: Your counterparts in the U.S. namely Propsmart and Trulia haven't
really codified what their revenue generating models will look like?
How do you plan to monetize Nestoria? (aside from the contextual
advertising)

EF: We don't have any contextual advertising. Our monetisation model
is based on lead generation. We will never charge money to be listed in
our database.


MP: You've released an API to the market. How many sites are
currently using it and can you point us to a few?

EF: We launched our API about a month ago and have seen a few interesting
experiments. Bear in mind though we're still only covering London.
It's very early days. We're curious to see what ideas are out there, and look
forward to speaking with anyone from the developer community with an interest
in property data.

Several sites are using our "Property Lists" tool that
allows any webmaster to display relevant properties on his or her website.
We discuss an example here:

http://blog.nestoria.co.uk/2006/08/29/property-list-in-use-on-london-se1couk/


MP: What has been your biggest challenge so far?

EF: Like any start up there's lots to do and few resources to do
it. So the challenge is always deciding what to prioritize. We try to
stay focused on learning from the users and continually improving the
property search experience. I'd be delighted if any mlpodcast
readers would drop by the site and give us their feedback - positive
or negative.


MP: When do you think you'll begin offering listings outside of London?

EF: As soon as we're confident we can offer users a good experience.
Our timeline is in weeks, not months.


MP: British Telecom has done some impressive things in the Web 2.0
space to turn their business around. Has anything come from the
recent changes by BT that has helped or hurt your efforts? How do
people feel about having a good ole' boy from Oklahoma as the CEO of
a British Industry Icon?

EF: I can't claim to be an expert on BT. In general though, the UK has
a dynamic, results driven business environment that's very open
to foreigners. The recent expansion of the EU has triggered the arrival of
a whole new wave ambitious immigrants. It's a great place to do business.

Technorati Tags: Real Estate 2.0, Trulia, Propsmart, Nestoria, Real Estate Search, Web 2.0, U.K. Real Estate