Joining the lineup of real estate data sites that already includes the listing obsessives over at StreetEasy and the loan mavens at PropertyShark is the new UrbanDigs.com, a revamped website from broker Noah Rosenblatt that hopes to serve as a real-time Manhattan market report. The goal: "A system that accurately can track market shifts in real time...that adapts to all the flaws of the constantly changing data and doesn't expose itself to the poisons (bad data) that would make charts less accurate." A noble mission! The site got the New York Magazine treatment before its launch. Now that it's officially here?in a registration-required free version and a $20/month version?we took it for a short test drive.
The options under the "Charts" tab are almost dizzying?market trend charts, charts with neighborhood breakdowns, searchable sub-market charts (with apartment size tracked primarily by number of bathrooms, not bedrooms), neighborhood sales tracking charts. Did we mention charts? Because there are a lot. Each one can be adjusted by time period and active, pending, and off-market sales. There's also a broker status updates tool, which updates signed contracts, listings taken off the market, and listings throughout the day. In short, we haven't been able to think of a chart we'd want that we couldn't find somewhere here.
Out of the non-brokers who might try out the site, it probably has the most value for sellers trying to figure out when to put places on or take them off the market. Buyers, unless they're really looking for a market big picture before digging into the listings, might find themselves facing information overload. As for the differences the UrbanDigs data will show compared to the major brokerages' quarterly market reports, we'll stay tuned.
· UrbanDigs [urbandigs.com]