Given the rise of real estate sites like Trulia and Redfin, it’s clear that the internet has become a primary resource for prospective home shoppers. But what should people do when they don’t know what city to live in, much less which home?
Hoodeo, a new website that launched today, is looking to match people with their ideal neighborhoods. The site uses a brief questionnaire to determine a user’s ideal location, and then uses real estate data from Trulia to offer a number of available homes within the region.
Unfortunately, it seems like Hoodeo’s matchmaking system could use a overhaul. The site bases a user’s “neighborhood personality” on only eleven questions, most of which revolve around income and profession. In fact, there are only two questions that seem to be based on personal preference (”Do you want to live in a family friendly area?” and “Do you want to live in a city or suburb?”). So much for creating a lifestyle profile.
Given such a limited analysis, it’s not surprising that the results are pretty questionable. After creating a profile that would have been perfectly suited for San Francisco or the Silicon Valley, my top match was Sacramento – hardly an ideal choice for a young man in the tech industry (the runner-up was Stockton). Of course, Hoodeo has no idea what industry I’m part of, because it never asked.
If Hoodeo can fix their matching algorithm, then the site might stand a chance. In the meantime, users are better off using the neighborhood data available on sites like Cyberhomes and Trulia.
Piece of garbage.
Second paragraph – “questionable” should be “questionnaire”
Was it a Freudian slip?
I just moved to a completely new area 2 months ago, but from the results I just got I would be nowhere near where I would want to be. Possible good idea, but poorly executed.
Great idea, but this is useless if they don’t fix their algorithms. Living in the South Bay, I specifically said I wanted to move to a larger city and their number one recommendation was San Bruno…
None of their subsequent recommendations came close to what I had in mind.
Ugh. People get too caught up in the actual creation of a site, but never give any thought to its production value or user experience. I give this a 9 on the crap o meter. Hoodeo needs to do some research before they go all out.
To answer your question, people looking to find a city or neighborhood to live in should just do a search or post at http://www.city...data.com/forum/ . Millions of posts just about that and tons of other info on the site.
#1 was Pittsburgh for me. The rest were rust belt cities I would never live in and Garland, TX. Not enough criteria to make a decision (where is climate for instance?). Good idea though.
Oh, and Jason, I live in Sacramento and I guarantee it’s much better than you think
No where close to interesting results. Regardless of what you put into the system (income, amount you are willing to spend on a home, etc) the results can not differentiate a $2Million home from a $510K home because they lump everything over $500K in the same category. So, if you were looking for a $2.5M home, you would be shown target locations from everything over $500K. You could get much better results with a travel guide and any one of the existing realtor sites! Did this really just launch today?
I’m 28, run a start-up, and come from Manhattan. I live in LA.
Hoodeo just matched with La Puente, California. Here is the wikipedia page: http://en.wikip...La_Puente%2C_CA
Needs some more work, I think…
Execution seems to be a big problem. Interesting concept, however. I guess this just goes to show that proper planning and programming should not be overlooked.
I think the concept is great. It’s too bad they couldn’t have got it right. No doubt that someone will, especially after all these comments and your post.
oh jesus folks, just get in your car and drive around. we’re talking about the biggest single investment you will make, a home.
The problem with sites like this (which told me I have NO matches) and top 10 places to live from money magazine etc, is that it is based on some good info and not enough quality of life factors that are not measurable but very important. Case in point, people would NEVER pick Manchester NH vs Portsmouth NH unless it had to do with commute or some smaller neighborhood community. I am sure everyone here can think of similar situations in their state.
Lots of other instances where on paper things look good, but it’s only because bedroom communities near by that keep crime stats down, or home value stats high for a given demographic region that the sites or magazines measure.
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Jason Kincaid said…
If Hoodeo can fix their matching algorithm
I am not sure whether Hoodeo uses a memory algorithm such as CBR (Case Based Reasoning), which is very poor use of CBR (or inappropriate use). CBR has been used in real estate property searches to match the closest (nearest) target property to the target (ie, the queried), specified by the user. The results is then ranked from the most similar to the least and obviously the top rank is the most closest to what a user wants. Memory search (CBR , etc…) is different from SQL based search which is more problematic because of its matching by using boolean logic, ie, an item is either match or don’t match. CBR matching (which is not boolean but it is based on similarity) would rank items from the most relevant match to the least.
For developers at Hoodeo, here are some interesting books on CBR from one of the world leading expert on this field here in New Zealand (Dr. Ian Watson). These are available at Amazon, so just go to Watson’s site (see below) and click on it to see a few CBR related titles, listed there. Those books have detail of how to develop a CBR engine.
http://www.cs.a...blications.html
Also Dr. Watson consults to the industry on the subject.
Hi Jason Kincaid, I’ve just submitted a comment and it just disappeared. I think it goes into your spamfolder, since my comment contains 2 HTML links. If you think that my comment is informative to readers on this thread and worth publishing, then please do so.
A perfect example of a problem that cannot be solved with the available data. There is no data field for “friendly to young upwardly mobile tech heads”. So for now folks will just have to read forums and sort out posters with like minded views.
So… Javan. I was just wondering. How’d you come up with the colors?
I have found http://www.findyourspot.com/ very helpful – it has the smarts that Hoodeo doesn’t!
@Moses… lol, same exact as me.
What the hell is this garbage? Decent idea, but awful execution. You’d think the commute would come into the picture somewhere. Yeah, I really think that driving 45 miles to work in LA is a fantastic recommendation. I’m packing my shit up tomorrow and moving to La Puente because the robot told me to.
Imagine someone that uses this and doesn’t know the general area at all. Man are they gonna be pissed when they end up living in Compton.
I selected Lawyer, and it told me my ideal place was Hell.
Hoodeo couldn’t even be bothered to find me a match.
“We were unable to match you to any neighborhoods based on the answers you provided in your hoodeo profile.”
Sweet Sweet, I am in the market to move very soon, I will def be using this site.
I have to second http://www.findyourspot.com/ and http://www.city...data.com/forum/
I tried out Hoodeo and like the interface and idea but got only one result for the info I put in which seemed like common results. I don’t want to move to Texas… They’ll improve it a bit and it will be a great tool. What I did is found a neighborhood then went to PropertyMaps to find more homes and foreclosure options. It’s a google maps/mls/realtytrac site that has good info on it.
Hoodie does poorly what a site like http://neighborhoodscout.com/ does well. It will be see if they can get their matching up to snuff fast enough to compete.
To Commenter #25 (Ed Peaslee):
Are you affiliated with PropertyMaps in any way? I see you commenting in various places on the web about how great propertymaps is. It’s a little bit curious, especially since I’ve never heard anyone else ever mention this company before. If you’re just a big fan of that website, then great. But if you’re affiliated with them and you’re not disclosing your affiliation when you leave comments like this, I think that’s a little sketchy.
On this blog (http://aliceist...uable-info.html) you wrote:
“Ed Peaslee said…
I’ve been using the site by PropertyMaps lately and it shows up to date info on properties and foreclosure homes. It’s a Google Maps/MLS/RealtyTrac mashup and has been a lot of help.”
And then here (http://activera...es-the-National) someone named Ed Carr wrote a suspiciously similar comment: “There’s another site out there now that a lot of people are using that many realtors see as competition as well. It’s a MLS/Google Maps/RealtyTrac mashup by PropertyMaps
06/30/2008 10:01 AM by Ed Carr”
And then here (http://sphinn.com/story/55504) someone named estewart6 wrote another similar comment: “I’ve been using PropertyMaps lately anyways and I’ve really liked it more.”
- Spencer from Zillow (a real estate website)
I heard of propertymaps.com several months ago and have found it to be much better than the other real estate 2.0 site. I’m with Ed, a raving fan.