Blockhunter.com ; a property site that works "in reverse"
Andy Martin, CEO of Firetail emailed us last week in response to our mymaps post. Andy wanted to introduce Blockhunter.com his newest project, which he describes as "a property site in reverse." Blockhunter works "in reverse" because in theory it allows buyers or renters of property to register and post their searches directly on a Google map interface. Sellers and landlords can then log in to Blockhunter to see who is interested in property like the one they're selling or trying to rent. Then the sellers or landlords can decide which buyers or renters they want to contact after reading their profile, a process they describe as "more like dating". At present, there is no charge for the service and conceptually in my opinion, Blockhunter is a guaranteed winner; given that it's mainly a social network for house hunters and property entrepreneurs.
At the moment however, the site is still very buggy. I tried listing a property for sale in Bayswater and got an impressive list of 42 potential buyers, however, when trying to access more details, the site kept prompting me to login, which was a bit of a nuisance. This may turn people off at this stage of development, but I feel quite confident that Andy and his team will be able to work through the bugs, given their impressive client list from previous projects.
Andy felt that it was "interesting" to see mymaps come out, but because Blockhunter has "an interesting twist", and furthermore, because the project is self-funded, he didn't have to "write a letter to Benchmark yesterday explaining what just happened to my business plan as a result of mymaps".
Most if not all of the new property sites are in one way or another aggregating sales information and using standard Google map API for presentation; all-be-it in their own unique and flavorful style. However, Blockhunter is different from all of the other "vertical" property sites in that they're not really vertical at all; in fact they're more kinda "horizontal", which is rather unique from this angle.

1 comments:
Thanks for the review!
You're completely right - we're trying to do something new here and we're using great feedback like this from users and experts to constantly refine the service.
So hopefully, it's improving all the time. In addition, we've got some new features coming that we're really excited about.
I'm delighted you think it's a 'guaranteed winner' too!
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