Site's Closing
We regret to inform our loyal users that we have received notice to cease and desist our operations from MLS/CREA Legal Counsel. Unfortunately, we do not have the time or money to fight this legal battle and will be closing down access to housing123.com as of today.
Our little project was initially conceived due to frustrations with browsing through property listings on the MLS.ca website. Just for kicks, we decided to make a more user friendly site -with a map- and share it with the public. It turns out we were right. The steady stream of daily users have poured into housing123.com, proving its usefulness!
We do hope that the lessons learned here over the last 10 months can be carried forward and applied to the MLS website with whatever plans they may have.
Thanks for using our site!
Kevin and Travis
posted by Kevin Lai @ 9:44 PM
40 Comments
40 Comments:
Wow, that is really too bad! My husband and I just moved to Toronto and your site has been an amazing help as we've been looking for a place to buy. The map format is so much better than the regular MLS site, especially since we are not familiar with all the TO streets and neighbourhoods. MLS should take lessons from you guys. Thanks for being a great resource, now I guess we'll have to go back to google mapping every place that we are interested in on MLS, and that sucks!
Yeah, seriously. The MLS system is SCREAMING out for a properly licensed Google Maps mashup.
Your site was super handy, guys. Good luck.
WHAT? That sucks.....I check out your site evryday and have found a few properties we've been interested in buying. MLS is brutal and your site made finding the right place-in the RIGHT location a breeze. Sorry to hear the news. You need investors :)
Kevin/Travis,
This is sunitha. I am so sorry for myself that i will not be able to use this site anymore. Hopefully MLS will learn by seeing this site traffic and its design.
Talk to you soon.
Sunitha
Kevin/Travis,
This site rocked and I am only sorry for I am in a middle of a house search, everybody I know use this site now. Hopefully, Hopefully, MLS will get their act together and make their site more user friendly, perhaps you can work with them on that.
Thanks for all the help in the past!
Is there anyway we can get a "fight MLS" legal fund going? I know they cornered the market and charge outrageous fees. Could this be an opportunity to stand up and fight for fairness?
Tom
I found www.housing123.com to provide a wonderful server. It made shopping for a home much more civilized. I am sure that that CREA could learn from this site. Perhaps the dropping real estate sales in Canada could be attributed to consumers being unable to find homes in the areas that they like. Have you tried to use the MLS search…. Needs lots of improvements.
What! Awful. I just discovered this site last week and thought it was brilliant. I too hope that MLS will incorporate a similar interface. It's excellent for comparing homes in the same area and pinpointing affordable areas. The thumbnail popups were also a great idea - I downloaded a Craigslist plug-in last week that did the same thing and shaved hours off a search. Seriously guys, bravo and good luck.
Can we have a call for action? Kevin and Travis are trying to do a good deed and they get screwed!!!
Kevin and Travis,
MLS owns the data on their site. You are infringing their copyrights. So even if you did have the time or money to fight this legal battle it would not be time or money well spent.
Why not continue to run the site with user generated content? You've mentioned already that there is a growing stream of users visiting the site. You have a great opportunity to launch an MLS competitor. Although it won't be long before MLS adds similar capability to their own (currently horrible) site.
Just a thought :) Good luck to you both.
Congrats to Kevin & Travis for getting their attention. Perhaps now that you have it it would be a good time to switch and start charging brokers to list on your site. You already have the traffic. At $1 a listing you would still be doing pretty well, and how could a broker justify not placing their properties there for that kind of money?
Don't let the site die.
That is really disappointing...my husband and I found this site incredibly useful and a great way to find houses available in the 'grid' area where we want to buy...
good luck with future work...hope this could be a template for the antiquated MLS system.
i agree - sorry to hear the ship had to sink. although i do find this news very interesting after reading a few weeks back that mls.ca was implementing a google mashup type of service very similar to yours.
thanks again for helping those of us who wanted better visual research on neighbourhoods we were interested in.
I agree that there must be a way to take on the horrible mls site. They don't want to be friendly, so I am hoping there is a way to make something that can take them on head-to-head. My next order of business is to email mls and let them know how pathetic and sad they are to have stopped this site.
arnab.
You guys need user generated listings. Like craigslist but for the housing market.
Hi Kevin/Travis,
Can we somehow reinvent this website I've been looking at buying a house in Toronto, however, as I am not from the area I am not sure which neighborhood is good for me. Its been hard to find information on up and coming areas, areas with good schools,good restaurants, low crime rates etc. I've been searching the web and can't find any information. Perhaps we can have a user created content website for buying homes in Toronto?
I wonder whether MLS would not make more money -- and better meet its mandate -- by selling API access to its data monopoly, rather than trying to leverage its data monopoly into an interface monopoly, too.
It would be really interesting to read an interview with MLS's digital strategy folks, or whoever carries that file there, to get their take on that kind of shift.
This sucks. You guys and your creative site helped me out. Housing 123 was better than tabbing between Google Maps, and MLS. Too bad MLS can't join the millennium because they hate on innovation.
Thanks for running this site guys! It was a vast improvement in searching for a house and it's pretty disappointing to come here and read this news. Damn you MLS! You guys really did take the obvious to the listing service and you implemented it really well.
I'm pretty ticked that I have to resort to the old way of searching.. MLS better get their own map up and running soon.
I would suggest that you now use this site to provide email addresses for the members of MLS/CREA that have contributed to the demise of housing123. That will allow housing123 users the opportunity to voice their displeasure regarding this turn of events and to ensure their comments are directed to the appropriate people.
So sad! I loved browsing on your site!
For the first time I felt like could understand the spatial organization of real estate; one could see prices drop along less desirable streets, and spot a low price in a booming area.
Now I have to go back to googling one at a time... bummer.
Maybe you should offer to sell your clever code to MLS?
Best to you and thanks so much.
Sorry to hear that they would rather shut you down than work with you to provide their clientelle with a better system. When I did my home search 3 years ago, I had to alt-tab back and forth from MLS.ca to google maps. This sounded like the ideal situation.
Why these companies just shut down good ideas instead of working with the creators to incorporate them into their present offerings, is beyond me, but then again, the real estate business is a big scam anyways
i just wrote an email to info@crea.ca; i really enjoyed using housing123.com it made my search much easier.
too bad, it was a great site. maybe MLS should buy you out?
I have seen the back end of the MLS software, and the god-awful interfaces their agents have to use. They are struggling mightily but failing to keep up with ten years ago. It's pathetic.
I agree with the comments of making this a user driven site rather than leveraging that old MLS system. I'm sure there are lots of ways to make use of the google api and community based material (i.e. like google map's photo feature) to enhance this site, and surpass that legacy MLS system. Since you have the customer base and popularity through word of mouth, maybe you can start recruiting some talent from this pool to make a way better site (user experience/feedback, etc).
the only place i have been looking is here and the Toronto Star...mls was a waste of time...they are too short sighted...sad.
you guys did great work. thank you.
there are so many frustrated private buyers and sellers out there who just want to close the deal. why don't you start a site like craigslist but where people can advertise their OWN properties and bypass the f@!*king greedy realtors and continue with housing123.com? it's legal to sell your own property, you don't need a license for that. so the site will only facilitate the process. I'm sure your database will be quite plentiful very fast.
I'm a lawyer (granted, not in this area) and I'm not so sure that what you're doing is illegal. I'd suggest consulting the law clinic at U of Ottawa's law school that deals with internet law/policy. You guys have a great website and MLS shouldn't be able to intimidate you.
Link to Ottawa legal clinic:
http://www.cippic.ca/en/
For anyone using Firefox, I just posted a Greasemonkey script called "MLS.ca Extras" which does two things:
1) Turns the listing's address into a google map link (which itself includes the MLS number and price for handy bookmarking)
2) Replaces the "More.." button with the remaining images (including links to their large size)
I've been using this just for my own purposes but after hearing about the closing of Housing 123 I decided to post it so that others may use it.
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/28825
NOTE: you will need the greasemonkey Firefox plugin installed before this will work. You can get it here:
http://www.greasespot.net/
that's sooo frustrating!
especially since they promoted in their header 'MASHUP TO COME ON MAY 28TH' and nothing happend beside taking the banner off.
mls.ca is the worst site i have ever seen in real estate. Wether it is you or others they need more info including your tech.search option by interactive map. I urge your company to press on or make a deal with the devil to keep your site active, it was great! i used it all the time.
I reccommend to others and real estate professional to view zipreality.com in USA, it is exactly what we need here.
There has to be more competition opened to CREA, they marketing on the internet and other mediums are from the 90's.. we should be able to know 'as consumers' buyers and purchasers of real property, what sold in the area, details of properties, photos, maps, what is for sale, taxes, schools, hospitals, etc . etc. just like what is availible on mls.com the USA site.
we are in a huge down-turn in Canada and we have the right to know the truth and not have real property associations lie to us about the real numbers. I see the same properties on the market for over a year but only showing 2 days on market. Toronto Real Estate agents cancel these listings after 3 months, then relist the same listing as a NEW listing, at a lower price. In the USA mls.com a viewer can see oringinal price listed, and see everytime the price was reduced, no relisting as a new listing.
I have seen 2 houses this week whereby the houses where listed 5 times, in the past year, but both showed NEW listings. One actually sold for asking price, so now it reflects on stats canada and to CREA differantly then it should. It will not say the buyer paid 100k more last year for the same house, it will say it sold 100% of list......any ways thanks for reading my vent..
Good news!
It's is good that you were shut down. I don't think you should be taking away our business. What are you? Another Home Depot? Do it yourself? How many can really?
We go to school to become agents and try to service our clients to the best of our abilities.
Everyone has 1 doctor, one accountant, one lawyer but when it comes to agents they recruit 30 real estate agents and want free information. The only free information should be given by an authority and that is the MLS. No one else should...
I am glad they brought down your site. You really had nothing more to offer.
A real estate agent can make eveyone's search easier.
It's a shame that MLS decide to take legal action to protect data that they make public on their website public anyways. I'm not against the agents; I fully believe a real estate agent can provide true value. I just feel sorry for MLS to hinder innovation that would benefit everyone. If they wanted to protect the data exclusive to the agents only, then they shouldn't have allowed the data to be posted on their website in the first place. It's just too tempting for someone else smarter to present your data in a more accessible way.
If MLS.ca later on decides to make a Google Map Mashup, then who would own the intellectual property of presenting the real estate data this way?
Sorry to hear that you got hit with the lawyer hammer. Its true that you were in a gray area with respect to the data, but it should have just re-enforced the point to mls.ca that they need to provide and embrace API access.
I'm very dissappointed that your site's been closed down... it rocks! I have referred it to many a friend as it was much superior to MLS's site. Please don't let it die.... if you rebuild, they will come. Agents are looking for better ways to market properties and they will migrate to your site if you can show that you have the traffic... keep innovating! Hook into facebook, leverage the latest social web and watch your site leapfrog past MLS. Just don't give up. We're all rooting for you guys! :)
I love that big companies pay HUGE bucks to site developers with so-called designers to come up with convoluted, tedious sites like mls.ca and then you two guys come along and merge their data (which was all they had going for them) with google maps. If anyone at mls had half a brain, they'd have bought you out and used your site instead of wasting money on lawyers and letters. MLS.ca works, but it makes you sift through tons of crap, doesn't give addresses, and considers areas waaaay more broadly than most buyers. Closing down someone who improves your businss is exactly the kind of thing that has backfired for the music production companies and movie production companies. I find it funny that mls.ca found that you were a threat and google, a multi-billion dollar company didn't complain a bit. Who's stock would you buy? Clearly, google gets it, mls.ca doesn't. Where does MLS think customers are going after they find a house on housing123 that they want to see... TO THIER REALTOR WITH THE MLS NUMBER! Thanks for nothing mls. You have taken away the only useful tool to search for over-priced real estate BY MAP in Toronto! I find it amazing how stupid some people are.
I've been dreaming of property listing system that has maps since even before I purchased my first home! Although I haven't seen the site that you guys came up with, it sounds as though it was a huge improvement over MLS.ca.
It's recently come to my attention that MLS.ca is changing to REALTOR.ca, and after checking this out it does have interactive maps. It's about freakin' time, I say!
Although it helps to secure the future for good real estate agents, it does nothing to enhance some of the less useful (and downright useless) real estate agents that are still around.
Visit my new blog for gripping (and sometimes rather sarcastic) discussion on the private sale market in Ontario, Canada.
Things are changing so quickly, it's so hard to keep up!
http://propertyforsalebyownerguy.wordpress.com
-Brian
That is too bad. I love this site, it was really user freindly. I agreed that MLS should take lession from you guys,not.... Anyways Good luck !
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