Given that Manhattan's not going to have a real live multiple listing service in our lifetime, the best hope for aggregated apartment listings would be specialized real estate metasearch sites. That was the idea behind Century 21 Kevin B. Brown's website revamp last month that pulled in listings from competitors. Cool idea—until Halstead, Brown Harris Stevens, and Warburg blocked them, according to a New York piece this week. Check out C21's new solution: analog search! Ouch. Very ouch.
Other players in the NYC metasearch space? We've noted NateFind.com recently, and there's also national classified metasearch engine Oodle, which lost its ability to aggregate Craigslist ads a few weeks back when Craiglist said, "Please don't." We've heard rumblings of several other such metasearch sites in the works—and, hey, is Google Maps mashup/metasearch Trulia coming to NYC? But given that real estate companies can stop anyone they please from crawling their web listings, we're wagering that comprehensive NYC real estate metasearch will remain as elusive as a real live MLS. Though we'd love to be proven wrong.
· Search and Destroy [New York]
· NateFind: New York Real Estate Search Engine [NateFind]
· Ooodle New York: Housing [Oodle]
· Show Me Everything! [Century 21 Kevin B. Brown]