While the National Association of REALTORS® is planning to launch its own national property database sometime next year, Google seems to have just stolen the NAR’s thunder. How? By rolling out individual “place pages” for every property that’s listed in Google Maps. Like this one for a home in Seattle:

The real estate listing place pages include property information, photos, map placement, Street View imagery and functionality, nearby public transit details, and even AdWords ads. Google has added links for “Directions” and “Search nearby,” as well as a “Send” link that opens an outgoing email with the place page link embedded inside. The property details in the example above are sourced from two separate Prudential Real Estate web sites, and from NWSource.com, which is the Seattle Times’ web site. It’s all presented just as you’d see on any standard MLS web site, though it lacks some of the deep information (such as square footage of individual rooms) available in a typical MLS listing.

There’s no announcement of this new feature yet on the Google LatLong blog, but it was announced today on the official Google Australia blog. That post says the real estate place pages may also include things like videos and inspection times. Left unsaid is that the place page format gives Google the space and flexibility to add new types of information in the future.

Google Maps has, of course, shown individual property information for some time. But it was relegated to the old, small, somewhat user-unfriendly info pop-up windows. The new place pages offer more information, are more user-friendly, and have short, clean links (like http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=18428966863334951733) that home buyers can easily pass around.

It’s the latest in a string of upgrades that Google has made to how it presents real estate information in Google Maps. For more, see Land Grab: Google Expands Real Estate Listings from July and Google Maps Makes Real Estate Search More Visible from last month. Add them all together, along with other updates that are sure to come, and it’s obvious Google is on its way to building what amounts to a national MLS-like database of property listings.

MLS, Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, Craigslist, fellow real estate listings sites, newspapers and other classified ad providers … please meet your new neighbor: Google.com. Google has expanded its real estate listings and added extra search functionality for users to find property listings in Google Maps.

A Google Maps search for “seattle real estate” looks mostly like it always has — listings of real estate agents and brokers on a map. But right below the search box is a hard-to-miss invitation to search current real estate listings. And the result, at least in this Seattle example, looks impressive:

What you’re seeing is an updated and more comprehensive version of the real estate listings that Google Maps has shown before, along with a new search tool. The results are coming directly from real estate brokerages and agents, many of whom upload listings into Google Base as part of their online marketing. Google is also getting listings from sources such as Homes & Land and The Real Estate Book and similar sites that advertise listings for participating real estate professionals.

There’s a basic search functionality that, while not as comprehensive as what’s available on most real estate sites, probably offers more than enough options for most home buyers: search by price range, bedrooms and baths, square footage, and a sign of the times — a checkbox to search foreclosures. On the map, each individual listing, whether a property for sale or rent, behaves like a business listing does in Google Maps’ business search. Users can click the red icon/dot for more information about the property; they can get directions, save the listing to My Maps, or send the listing to someone else via email, phone, car, or GPS. (Yes, car: BMW and Mercedes-Benz have models that are integrated with Google Maps.)

Andrew Foster, Product Manager for Google Australia and New Zealand, tells The Age that Google is launching real estate listings because real estate search activity is on the rise. “There’s … been a 35 percent growth in real estate-related queries on Google in the year to February 2009.” (He’s presumably speaking about Google Australia, but it’s safe to assume that real estate search activity is growing in many, if not most places.)

What remains to be seen is how the real estate industry will react. One of Australia’s leading real estate advertising publishers has decided against giving its listings to Google. Closer to home, the National Association of Realtors recently made its feelings clear when it called Google a “scraper” site and supported a local board’s decision to stop allowing some MLS listings to be crawled by search engines.

Postscript by Barry Schwartz: The Google Australian blog just announced this feature and you can access it in the states at http://maps.google.com/help/maps/realestate/.

Postscript #2 by Matt: The Google Lat-Long blog has also posted about real estate search changes. There are plenty of details in that post about what’s new and how it works.

Google has offered the capacity to search real estate listings for a long time. For example, when entering queries such as “homes for sale in San Francisco,” a “one box” result used to show pull-down menus for “location” and “listing type.” Activating these boxes would then lead into a specialized “Google Base” screen that allowed for further refinement. I found those screens as recently as earlier this week but today couldn’t duplicate them. However, earlier this week Google exposed a “real estate” filter, among others, on Maps.

A search in my old San Francisco zip 94118 shows these listings when the “real estate” filter is invoked:

There’s a somewhat more helpful “text view” of this same data:

Google, in the text view, also offers some refinements: by price, bedrooms, and bathrooms. These appear to be successive, meaning that they build upon one another.

The data are apparently coming via Google Base through a range of sources. But they’re not comprehensive, which is important in the real estate context. However, if Google were to do deals with the various sources of MLS data around the US, it could build a fairly comprehensive listings database. That might make it more competitive with vertical search engines and real estate sites such as Trulia, Zillow, Yahoo Real Estate, Move.com, and so on. By comparison to most of those sites, Google’s real estate search and overall experience in this category is rather “skeletal” at the moment.

When entrepreneurs are pitching a new startup idea or prototype to venture capital, the perfunctory question often arises: “Why wouldn’t Google do this?” In the vertical context it’s typically the case that Google won’t go to the lengths of others to build a specific vertical experience (there are some exceptions). The imperative for Google is to scale its applications globally — and that is often at odds with developing rich content and community around a particular subject area.

It is possible, however, with several tweaks and improvements, that real estate search on Google could get much better and become much more competitive over time.

When Google launched StreetView it was widely discussed (and in some cases disparaged because of the privacy implications), but few people regarded it as a practical tool. However, in what appears to be the first implementation of StreetView on a third-party site, Trulia has incorporated its imagery and functionality in 40 US metropolitan areas, with more to follow. The new capability is called “Walk the Neighborhood” by Trulia.

The Google StreetView images appear on the property listings pages:

In this real estate-specific context, StreetView quickly shows its practical side.

On most real estate sites, one can see still images (or worse, illustrations) of the exterior of the house intended to showcase it in its best light. Most of the time there are also interior shots available. But a potential buyer doesn’t get to see the surrounding homes or the larger neighborhood until actually at the property. StreetView on Trulia can thus potentially save homebuyers’ time by providing more “context” to listings.

For example, if you’re thinking about even looking at that two-bedroom condo in San Francisco listed at $800,000, you might want to examine at the block surrounding it to determine whether it’s worth your time:

All this goes double for people who may be relocating from one city to another and can’t easily visit the property in question.

Zillow previously incorporated Microsoft’s Bird’s Eye photography, which is also helpful in this context but not to the same degree.

Zillow doesn’t see itself as a real estate “vertical.” Instead, it regards itself as a media company that creates advertising opportunities around what is arguably the most significant “life events” purchase: buying a home.

In that spirit, the company is developing numerous interesting marketing vehicles aimed at consumers in all phases of home buying (and in the future home remodeling). One critical piece of that equation is getting a home loan or an equity line of credit. Enter the new Zillow Mortgage Marketplace.

Basically the site is a lead-gen tool for lenders, but without any fees. Lead-gen isn’t the business model; lenders can use the site for free. Zillow makes money on ads that will be served to consumers visiting the various pages of the Mortgage Marketplace. If the site is successful with the new offering, it will put pressure on conventional lead-gen sites for lenders such as LendingTree, among others.

One thing that’s very interesting about what Zillow is doing is that it’s going to allow borrowers to rate lenders so that consumers can make determinations about whether to do business with them accordingly. This is a unique feature of the site, in my understanding, and may spur others to do the same. That should flush out some of the “bait and switch” tactics that exist in the home loans market.

Consumers (would-be borrowers) apply online to receive loan offers from multiple lenders. They have to provide a good deal of information, including an estimated credit score. But borrowers are allowed to remain anonymous and don’t offer their SSNs. This prevents aggressive lenders from hounding consumers with calls, which happens in other mortgage lead-gen scenarios.

Participating lenders are verified by Zillow and loan “offers” are submitted to borrowers in something like a reverse auction. Lenders can see the other offers submitted to an individual borrower and try to “one up” the best offer on the table. Consumers can then choose which lenders to contact.

In my call with Zillow I got into an arcane discussion about consumer perceptions, contracts, and potential liability for Zillow. The company has thought through nearly 100 percent of the legal issues associated with brokering these potential deals. Indeed, no “transaction” takes place through the site. Ultimately, lender and borrower have to strike a deal independently, with the information exchanged through Zillow as the foundation of that potential deal.

I was told also that mortgage brokers and lenders were already very heavy users of the Zillow site and that the company sought to create a mortgage product that would benefit those lenders and consumers simultaneously and improve upon lead-gen products already in the market.

Zillow said that it already had “hundreds of lenders registered and confirmed at launch even without product details,” indicating a high degree of demand — somewhat surprisingly — in a down market.

Just when you thought there were enough competitors in the real estate vertical, here comes some more. Last week a new real estate search engine, Roost, launched in selected US markets. Today UK-based DotHomes, which has been operating in the UK and South Africa, makes its US debut. DotHomes seeks to become “the Google of property search” and is crawling for listings. By contrast, Yahoo Real Estate, Roost, Trulia, and Zillow, as well as others, get feeds from brokers and MLS services.

I spoke last week with DotHomes founder Douglas de Jager and had a chance to use the site over the weekend, however I haven’t done any systematic comparison of how it stacks up against competitors. I can say that some quick comparisons showed that it had fewer listings in some cases than Trulia. However, the site is very straightforward and easy to use and the data will improve over time.

Assuming the data get stronger, the approach DotHomes is taking allows consumers to perform very specific “unstructured” lookups, as well as browse for listings. For example:

“Condo Seattle under 300,000“:

“Oakland, CA Thornhill Elementary School“:

Again, the data in my preliminary investigation were incomplete but the interface is attractive and the site is very simple and usable. But comprehensiveness is key to success in this vertical.

Real estate search is very much like travel in that there’s no single site that so far can be trusted to be comprehensive or contain all the desired information. Accordingly, would-be home buyers must use multiple sites. However, the segment is becoming increasingly competitive and there isn’t room for 10 or 12 successful sites.

That’s especially true in a slumping US real estate market, because while traffic is up to real estate sites, advertising is down.

Real estate may be slumping in the real world, but online the opposite is true. Zillow and Trulia in particular have been driving lots of change and innovation in the online real estate segment. Yesterday Trulia released a free publisher platform. And last night Zillow made several announcements. Among them, the Seattle-based site is formally coming out of beta and, together with several competitors (Yahoo Real Estate, Oodle, Trulia, among others), is supporting a common data format that will standardize feeds from brokers and multiple listings services (MLS). This should accelerate the transition and delivery of more listings online.

Zillow also said that it has greatly expanded its database of homes for which it offers its “Zestimates.” Spencer Rascoff, Zillow CFO & VP of Marketing, told me that Zillow will now have home valuation estimates for almost 90 percent of all homes in the United States. Rascoff also said the site continues to add for sale listings from brokerage partners at an increasing pace. (Zillow also has a far-reaching deal with a consortium of US newspapers.)

Zillow’s Zestimate algorithm has also been improved to make it more accurate according to Rascoff. There are more data points, and the factors being weighted are more nuanced and more locally sensitive than in the past. He added that accuracy improvements approach 30 percent in some cases.

The home valuation Zestimates are what initially captured users’ imaginations when the site launched in early 2006, driving tremendous word of mouth and growth. But they have also been controversial and heavily criticized as inaccurate. (At one point they were the subject of litigation.) Rascoff told me that in addition to improved algorithms, roughly a million homeowners have “claimed their homes” and modified the information available on the site, which has also contributed to improving the accuracy of Zestimates.

Beyond Zestimates, Zillow has added innovative community features and advertising programs that provide super-local targeting (down to the house level). The company was started by the team behind travel site Expedia and has raised a gargantuan $87 million in VC funds to date.

Borrell Associates estimates that online real estate-related advertising is worth $2.9 billion today. Traditional US real estate classified advertising was worth just over $5 billion in 2006 according to the Newspaper Association of America, while the National Association of Realtors estimates that total real estate ad spending in the US is roughly $12 billion annually.

Here’s a slightly more critical view of Zillow from TechCrunch.

Separately Yahoo, which claims to be the number one online real estate site, introduced a new program that enables real estate franchises and brokers to post all their listings online for free.

Realtors are an interesting segment of the small business market. Of quintessential small businesses (SMBs) and entrepreneurs, in some respects, realtors are atypical. One of them is marketing; realtors tend to be more aggressive and creative than other categories of SMBs. Accordingly, this LA Times article talks about how the mood has shifted and local realtors are now embracing the Internet with enthusiasm (but also out of necessity).

Real estate ad spending is worth approximately $12 billion in the U.S. annually, according to the National Association of Realtors. And a host of websites are trying to grab chunks of that, from Move.com to Trulia and Zillow.

Borrell Associates estimates that online real estate spending is currently worth $2.9 billion but that the category will also see slowing growth ahead. Traditional newspaper real estate spending was up in 2006, representing just over $5 billion in advertising according to the Newspaper Association of America. However, this year classifieds are off in double digits (down about 20% for real estate). Part of this is due to the housing slump and “sub-prime” mortgage crisis. But some of the explanation has to go to a structural shift in real estate sector advertising.

In late 2006 newspaper analyst firm Classified Intelligence conducted an in-depth survey of realtors about their advertising spending and attitudes toward print and online media. Among the findings of the survey were the following:

–36% of surveyed realtors spent 10% or less of their total budgets in their local newspapers, 19% spent less than 20% of their total budgets on newspaper print ads, and 17% didn’t advertise at all in print newspapers –52% of survey respondents reported promoting their services on free classified sites such as Craigslist (67%), Google Base (45%), and MSN/Windows Live Expo (33%) –61% of respondents said they weren’t spending any marketing dollars on newspaper websites

In July, 2007 Inman News conducted a similar realtor survey, which found:

–40% of respondents said they planned to spend $1,000 to $5,000 on [online marketing] in the next year, while approximately 20% planned to spend less than $1,000, and 18% planned to spend more than $10,000

–The most popular category of online advertising was search engine keywords, which 52% of respondents said they planned to buy in the next year. Featured listing ads ran a close second with 48% planned buys. Search engine optimization (SEO) services were a priority as well with 42% planned buys. Dollar amounts budgeted for keyword advertising in the next year ranged from zero to more than $5,000

There are ways in which the findings of the Classified Intelligence survey and the Inman data contradict each other. For example, Classified Intelligence found that geotargeted search was in the minority for realtors, with only 26% spending anything on local PPC. (The numbers would likely be higher today in the same survey.)

Yet, directionally, the data are consistent, indicating that more real estate marketing dollars are flowing to the Internet and search, following consumer adoption. But more than search, sites like Zillow and Trulia stand to benefit in particular because of how targeted they are. And Zillow is doing some very innovative things with advertising on its site, while both destinations have developed strong consumer followings.

It would be a mistake to predict the death of real estate advertising in traditional media, as some might be inclined to do. Certainly it will never again be what it was. But the future will include both traditional media as well as the Internet because audiences are quite fragmented now. In addition, as Classified Intelligence discovered, “Realtors [are] still buying print – not because it works better than other ad choices, but because sellers expect to see their listings in the local paper as proof that their agents are working for them.”

As the Wall Street Journal reported this morning, real estate and local search site Zillow announced another round of investment — this time a whopping $30 million. That means the company has raised roughly $90 million since launching in early 2006. Among other intended uses of the money, the site will be growing its sales force, which currently stands at 20.

Zillow is one of a number of “Web 2.0″ real estate sites that have shaken up the landscape in the past 12 – 18 months. Zillow’s Vanessa Fox (formerly of Google) will be speaking at SMX Local & Mobile.

Zestimates from Zillow have proven to be a tremendous hit with the public, although they’ve been criticized for being too high or too low in some cases. Now Yahoo has taken Zillow’s home valuation data (they’ve had a partnership for several months) and combined it with similar data from other providers, eppraisal.com and reply.com, in a new and improved Home Values section of Yahoo Real Estate.

Here’s a provided example in Seattle, with valuations in the upper right. And here’s the Yahoo Local & Maps blog post that explains the new functionality in further detail.