Charleston Home Tour
Charleston Home Tour is now almost completely automated (shell, ruby, sql, xml) for syndicating real estate listings and we’re able to do it extremely efficiently and cheaply thanks to some impressive programming from my brother. I’ve had it going for almost a couple years now and it’s working out well for me and my clients.
Update: 9/27/2011 – I’ve gone back in to edit this post now that Charleston Home Tour is no more. I started Charleston Home Tour in 2005 while learning to build websites in college and I’m now building website full time for a publishing company. What got me started on it was when a buddy of mine showed me a virtual reality image that allows you to view 360 degrees in every direction. I learned how to make those and the feds went after the MLS associations which created a way to syndicate listing data. Google Real Estate really got it off the ground because suddenly every agent wanted a way to showcase their homes. I built real estate listings for any brokerage and created web pages for each home tour. I would sent out thousands of marketing emails weekly for each listing. I also ended up getting my real estate license for a number of MLSs so that I could access the data. My brother did quite a bit of the programming related to pulling the syndicated data from the MLS and I focused on the front end development and photography. Around this time platforms like Hot Pads, Google Base, Trulia, and Homes and Land were starting to accept syndicated listings. I did 100’s of home tours for at least twenty different brokerages. Looking back on it now, I think that virtual tours are becoming common place and Charleston Home Tour was ahead of it’s time. It was quite a learning experience running my own business and I spent a lot of time learning to do quarterly taxes, quickbooks, and handle billing. That’s the part I really don’t miss. One day, I’ll archive and re-publish some of the old listings because I had really started feature more and more multi-million dollar homes and it was fun photographing and touring them.