Home Sold, Job Found & Goods sold on Twitter. Should eBay & Craig's List Watch Out?

                     

     [ Masiero Family New Home, Berlin NH. Bought through Twitter.]

In the last couple of weeks, I've learned about the first home to be sold on Twitter, a Canadian PR guy who found a job, and new invention to lessen pain in lactating moms. Along with these major items, there's an array, of people search for apartments, brokers getting listing, iPhones and used clothing that have changed hands in the real world through Twitterville encounters.

The house is the biggest deal, and the price also makes it interesting to home buyers and perhaps scary for home owners.

Tom Masiero is co-founder of YoParts.com , an online auto parts club, whose members get discounts on what they buy. He's been living in a rented condo in southern, New Hampshire, paying $1300 a month and figuring it would be some time before he could buy his own home in a place where he'd like to raise a family. Oh yeah, one other key point: He Twitters.

Enter my ubiquitous pal KDPaine also of Southern NH, not far from where Tom resides in the tangible world. KD has been doing some consulting for Coos County, in the Northern portion of NH, a place that gets spectacular this time of year, but also an area where the housing market is stressed. For example, Berlin, a scenic town of about 10,000 people has 200 homes on the market, 80 of them foreclosures.

Among the homes that has sat on the market with lawn sign gathering cobwebs since April is a little beauty owned by a 91-year-old widow who has lived in the 1200 square foot, three bedroom, two-story place all her life. The home is 102, and I'm told it has been well-maintained.

KD hears about the house and tweets about it, mentioning in her 140-character post that the asking price is all of $75,000. Tom reads the post, makes connections, rides three hours north and closes a deal for $55,000, in time for the widow to move to Florida before winter and his family to celebrate Thanksgiving amid the breathtaking late autumn foliage. "There's great broadband in Berlin and I can do most of my work at home, driving south just when I really have to. It really was the deal of a lifetime.

KD was so impressed with the prices and opportunities that she chipped in with an associate to buy an attractive vacation rental for a whopping $39,000. I have a hunch Paula & I will be staying in it next fall.

People who hang out in Twitterville, can't help but notice there has been a steady influx of residential real estate people lately. Why? Because, like politicians, they tend to be quick to notice where people are heading. Gina Kay Landis is one of them. She runs a national listing service and reports that she just picked up her first listing reference through her Twitter account. Perhaps it was the first ever. I have little doubt it will be the last.

John Carson reported to me that he got laid off from a PR job in Toronto, posted about it on Twitter and got rehired. I somehow managed to lose his email. John if you read this, contact me and I'll insert the links.

The most unique item that I could find sold so far on Twitter is the Shower Hug. Sam Bhavnani,  is director of NPD Group in San Diego, when he is not surfing. When he's not doing either, he's tweeting as SamirB. He told me, "A girl I was friends with in high school, who tweets as PockLock just had a baby and was complaining about her sore breasts.

" It also happens that a good friend of mine in San Diego started a company based on an invention she had when she first became a mother and experienced the same problem. The Shower Hug is her product. It's a soft terri cloth type of thing women can wrap around their chest and wear in the shower, so they don't get hurt by the shower sprays. My friend back east went online and bought one. And she loves it."

It just so happens I have a daughter who is breast-feeding two infants right now, so Sam's friend will wring up a new sale sometime in the near future.

So what's going on here? Do I really mean to imply that these transactions could somehow threaten the mighty icons of eBay and Craig's List?

Yes.

Wherever people gather and converse, markets form. Both Craig's List & eBay have certain community characteristics. But they are not communities. Numeric rankings of credibility on technology is far from the same way people in real communities refer goods, service and each other.

Twitterville is much more like a real community. We meet each other first and decide about each other in terms of reputation. We influence each other. Twitter was not built or intended to be a transactional marketplace. It lacks lots of functionality that you'll find at Craig or eBay. But it has something more valuable. It is an authentic community and it's members will make of that community whatever they want.

I predict that there will be a great many more transactions that start with Twitter conversations, then move elsewhere to close the deal. Meanwhile if you like snow, mountains and fall foliage, I suggest you contact my pal KD. She seems to know where the deals are.

 

Comments

[Gina Kay Landis]

Hi,
Quick correction - I'm a Realtor with Real Living Realty Services in SW Ohio and thus list and sell homes (I don't own it actually!).

For those unfamiliar with real estate transactions, here's a synopsis: The referral was for another agent in another state to help his in-laws who wanted to buy a home in yet another state (yes, that's how real estate works). I referred him (and in-laws) to one of our Real Living franchises in the chosen state for the in-laws, the broker/manager or one of his agents helped the in-laws find a home, the house is under contract and looks like it will sell. Note: referrals often result in agents being paid a referral fee. Such fees cannot be paid to unlicensed referring entities. The referral fee paid to the referring agent (in this case myself or the Realtor in a distant state whose in-laws want to buy a property) helps make Twitter a business enterprise site, versus a site for social purposes only.

I have gotten listing referrals via social/new media sites such as ActiveRain.com and helped others via Twitter with their businesses.

Twitter and other social/new media sites are already one of the primary methods of interacting with one another in a particular age group or interest niche.

As the market expands to include such venues, relocation referrals and local referrals via Twitter etc. may soon become the norm, versus the current exception.

Gina Kay
Twitter ID: @ginakay

[Gina Kay Landis]

Sorry, didn't mean to sound geeky on real estate. Good article and thanks for the mention.

Gina Kay

[frank]

Awesome information ... this was one that i had to stumble and share with others as it makes me think and expands my general thoughts about the social-web.

Selling a home through Twitter ... incredible!

I wonder how ebay/amazon/etc ... will engage or not engage on Twitter or other similar type social-web tools.

I could easily see people selling things on eBay getting into using twitter ... which makes me think eBay should think about some way to 'connect' the 2 systems in a way that makes doing business simpler for the buyer and seller.

anyways ... very interesting stuff.

thx!

--
http://twitter.com/franswaa

[Daniel Rothamel, The Real Estate Zebra]

Glad to see Gina getting kudos. The real estate professional community on Twitter is vast, and many of them have found business success on Twitter. It is an amazing application.

@realestatezebra

[Doug Keipper]

Glad to see this information and I am currently working on this.

[tw morse]

Of interest for your blog?

http://domainnamewire.com/2008/09/29/lessons-from-conagra-and-defensive-domain-registrations/

[Zach]

Real estate agents in Chicago are getting on board as well. In fact, yesterday an agent told me to follow him on twitter if I wanted to know about his latest listings.

[Matthew Watson]

I got my job through Twitter in May! See http://www.m-p-w.co.uk/2008/05/my-first-pr-job.html

:)

[Local Estate Agents]

Wow, amazing at how Twitter helped us a lot ways. First you can find real estate and some really nice places plus cool jobs.

[shehanaaz]

If you think of Google as the Internet’s memory the process that can access every image, sound and bit of knowledge that a decade of our online existence has generated and stored then Twitter is its stream of consciousness.
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shehanaaz
Real Estate