It’s difficult to find a subject that’s less clear to most builders - How exactly do their community listings get distributed to directories on the web, and how do they change or improve their content, accuracy, placement, etc?

New Home Feed is aiming to change all that. By far, it was my best product/service takeaway from the International Builder Show. New Home Feed was put together by a San Francisco based ad agency doing lots of work with builders, Graphic Language. They hear all the complaints about the general mess that is builder listings on the web -

“My listings should be on that site.”
“We’re not paying for that community to be listed there.”
“That community has been closed for a year!”

Thankfully, these guys are talented enough to do something about it.

New Home Feed is a listing distribution service designed to simplify the management and distribution of builder community listings to the largest real estate directories on the web, free and paid sites alike. Its a tool designed for use directly by the builder to manage your presence on the web.

What I like about New Home Feed:

• They’re not a listing site. They have no interest in hoarding listings, leads, impressions, or controlling clicks. They work for the builder, and create a marketplace for directories to compete for your business.
• Independent data. They’re delivering builders metrics, as a third party, detailing what listing sites are getting you the most activity.
• Fresh Listings. That’s their own phrase, but New Home Feed is touting strong commitments from listing sites to prioritze the data from their listings.
• Data Control. They provide builders with community-level control of what information goes where. If you want community A, B, and C to go to Trulia.com, and community C, D, and F to go to NewHomesDirectory.com, but communities A-Z to go to NewHomeSource.com and Move.com, its all possible. This kind of control was previously only achievable for the national builder crowd.

While the service will not be released for a few more months yet, I’m excited about the level of control its going to provide builders. I was fortunate enough to get a full demo at IBS, and hope the guys will be dripping out some more news and maybe some screen shots as the launch draws near, including some firm pricing. At first glance, its going to be geared to the mid-sized regional builder, but I’m hopeful for some small builder options, too.

Its one of the few tools I’ve seen recently that genuinely empowers a builder to become more independent, as opposed to requiring them to become more reliant on a particular service.

Full disclosure: I attended a dinner at IBS co-sponsored by New Home Feed, but I’m in no way affiliated. I genuinely like the concept they’re presenting.

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