PropertyShark.com - Company News

PropertyShark.com and Trulia Form a Strategic Partnership

Wednesday, February 15th, 2006

New York City, February 15, 2006 – PropertyShark.com, a leading data analytical tool for property search and Trulia, a real estate listings metasearch service based in San Francisco, announced their partnership today.

“We have a bilateral cross linking relationship which allows Trulia to enhance its search results with PropertyShark data, helping to make it a better service for home researchers. In return, we use Trulia search results in PropertyShark reports, giving our users a good sense of what nearby properties are for sale. We also jointly promote each other,” comments chief executive officer of PropertyShark.com, Ryan Slack.

Trulia’s co-founder, Pete Flint adds, “The Internet real estate researcher is hungry for the most comprehensive and accurate information. With this integrated partnership, we can offer consumers a more informed search experience while supporting the sales process for brokers and agents.”

PropertyShark founder, Matthew Haines, further explains, “As the real-estate data market heats up, with lavishly-funded start-ups like Zillow joining the fray, it is essential that focused players like Trulia and PropertyShark partner to provide consumers and professionals with a soup-to-nuts offering of sales, leads, and property data and tools.”

The two companies have already partnered in Los Angeles and New York City markets and plan to tackle other key cities in coming months.

About Trulia

Trulia has revolutionized the search for residential real estate by offering a comprehensive source of information that does not require any software installation, download, or registration. By partnering with real estate brokers, Trulia helps consumers to find the most comprehensive and up-to-date information about individual homes for sale in addition to extensive information about neighborhoods and market trends. Based in San Francisco, Trulia was founded by two Stanford graduate students who believed that they could deliver a superior real estate search experience that met the needs of consumers and the real estate brokerage industry.

With over 20 million properties in twenty major markets, PropertyShark.com provides real estate professionals and investors with data and tools on all aspects of property, including building details, ownership information, recent sales prices, property tax, sophisticated maps, apartments for sale, foreclosures and pre-foreclosures, mailing lists, photos, and more, available directly from the web. PropertyShark.com strives to level the playing field by offering independent real estate firms, investors, and savvy consumers the information transparency essential to evaluate real estate and make informed decisions. For more information go to: www.propertyshark.com

PropertyShark.com Photographs Every Building in Manhattan

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006

New York City, January 3, 2006 – PropertyShark.com, a data analytical tool for property search, just announced they have taken a picture of every building in Manhattan—over 40,000 in total.

“We’ve indexed each photo to an actual building,” explains Matthew Haines, founder, PropertyShark.com. “Each photo has been taken by hand, by our team of extraordinary photographers, with high-quality digital cameras equipped with wide angle lenses to capture entire buildings and portions of neighboring properties,” continues Haines. “These photographers have quite a few stories to tell about all they’ve encountered in their mission to complete this project.

“When we first came up with the idea to do this project, we tried to fashion a much more high-tech way of taking pictures, but eventually went back to the most effective method—taking pictures of each building on foot, walking nearly 1000 miles in total,” comments Ryan Slack, chief executive officer, PropertyShark.com

“While this started out as a practical addition to our site, useful for professionals and consumers alike, as we began to work through the project, in addition to its business uses, it became a conceptual art project with sociological value,” declares Haines.

“Both Ryan and I moved to New York City from California and we came to love the gritty, big city feel—we wanted to capture the overwhelming size of it. We saw that New York City was undergoing a huge boom in new construction, and we knew that five years from now the city we had come to love would no longer be the city newcomers would see. We wanted to capture all the parts just as they are,” continues Haines, quick to note that these are not glamorous architectural shots, but rather everyday photos.

“No other company out there has done this,” proclaims Slack. “MSN, Google, Yahoo and Amazon’s A9.com are all attempting to do similar photo projects in Manhattan, yet none of these players have achieved what we have,” Slack elaborates proudly. “A9, which is farthest along, only shows the first two stories of each building, while PropertyShark.com offers a full picture of the entire façade; in addition, we provide shots of every building on every street, whereas they only have certain commercial streets available. We also link every photo to a specific building address, but A9’s photos are not indexed to specific addresses only general locations.”

In addition to displaying the pictures in the PropertyShark.com’s property reports, the photos are also incorporated into the site’s maps, showing exactly where the building is located.

“A9’s photos are displayed by showing all streets as East-West, which can make it difficult to know what building you are seeing or even what side of the street you are viewing,” adds Haines.

The photos can be used for a wide variety of purposes:

  • Researching buildings for sale
  • Checking out apartments
  • Scouting a neighborhood or location
  • Perusing a commercial district—viewing the exterior of a restaurant, bar or shop
  • Combining them with state-of-the-art interactive PropertyShark.com maps to quickly search to locate properties/locations

PropertyShark.com’s photographers will not get to rest for long. The company plans to continue until all of NYC is photographed.

With over 20 million properties in twenty major markets, PropertyShark.com provides real estate professionals and investors with data and tools on all aspects of property, including building details, ownership information, recent sales prices, property tax, sophisticated maps, apartments for sale, foreclosures and pre-foreclosures, mailing lists, photos, and more, available directly from the web. PropertyShark.com strives to level the playing field by offering independent real estate firms, investors, and savvy consumers the information transparency essential to evaluate real estate and make informed decisions. For more information go to: www.propertyshark.com

PropertyShark.com Forms Strategic Alliance with PostcardBuilder

Thursday, November 3rd, 2005

New York City, November 3, 2005 – PropertyShark.com, a data analytical tool for property search, announces their strategic alliance with PostcardBuilder to better serve the real estate community by offering one-stop for building information and full service mailings.

Says PropertyShark.com chief executive officer Ryan Slack, “In our continual efforts to level the playing field in New York City real estate we have strategically formed an alliance with a major postcard designer and mailing house, PostcardBuilder.”

“Previously, a smaller agency or broker didn’t have the ability to easily research building information and efficiently perform targeted mailings themselves. Through our alliance with PostcardBuilder, we can now make it easier than ever for all real estate professionals to target buildings, get building photos, generate mailing lists and design and mail postcards,” continues Slack.

PostcardBuilder is a full-service direct mail firm that prints and mails postcards in 48 hours. PostcardBuilder is used by real estate professionals and other businesses nationwide to execute their postcard mailings.

Says PostcardBuilder president, Kurt Johnson, “The strategic alliance makes us both stronger. We can offer tools for businesses to design, print and mail postcards, but the mailing list is the critical component that drives response. PropertyShark.com offers realtors customized, targeted mailing lists.”

Nothing its broad appeal, Corcoran broker, Michael Guerra comments, “Combining the ease of use of PropertyShark’s accurate data with a vendor who can make cards is helpful to a myriad of people: brokers, investors, developers, realtors, contractors, landscapers, and architects.”

Allen Harris, an independent broker, has this to say about his recent use of the new offering, “As an independent broker, I am always looking for ways to get my name out. I had already decided to do a postcard to my local neighborhood, having lived here 23 years, and when I saw the page on PropertyShark.com, I made my decision. I found it very convenient to do it all in ONE STOP and for a very reasonable rate….overall a great program.”

With over 20 million properties in twenty major markets, PropertyShark.com provides real estate professionals and investors with data and tools on all aspects of property, including building details, ownership information, recent sales prices, property tax, sophisticated maps, apartments for sale, foreclosures and pre-foreclosures, mailing lists, photos, and more, available directly from the web. PropertyShark.com strives to level the playing field by offering independent real estate firms, investors, and savvy consumers the information transparency essential to evaluate real estate and make informed decisions. For more information go to: www.propertyshark.com