Nova Scotia, by far, HomeZilla’s top market for real estate listings in Canada. We now have over 7100 Nova Scotia real estate listings this is over 50% of all listings. All listings are provided via NSAR .

This past week, we have added three new offices to our feed:

• Anne Thomson Realty Ltd, in Liverpool, NS
• RE/MAX South Shore Realty Ltd., in Bridgewater, NS
• Coldwell Banker Supercity , in Bridgewater and Halifax

Thanks to these new partcipating offices we have added over 500 new listings to our website.

There are quite a few cool listing in their feed but here are three of my favorites:

• 3000 feet of water fron in Hubbards, Nova Scotia
• Amazing, off the grid house that is almost all windows looking at the ocean.
• In Vancouver, this would probably cost you $12 million dollars!

We are proud to annouce that a 3rd Nova Scotia newspaper has choosen HomeZilla to power their real estate section; both online and in print.

The Lighthouse Log is the newspaper for Lunenburg County in Nova Scotia; their website is SouthShoreNow.ca. You can check out thier list of Pictou County Real Estate For Sale to see how HomeZilla has integrated into their website.

HomeZilla powering their print section is key to a succesful partnership because in small communities print is still king.
Check out the Lighthouse Log PDF .

As a testiment to the product, every real estate offices servicing Lungenburg County has joined to help produce this innovative product.

What do you think? What would you change about the print page? What about the website?

Today is an exciting Friday at HomeZilla. We have just passed our 5000 registered REALTOR. That presents about 6% of REALTORS in Canada and that is a testiment to the quaility of our data. Who was the 5000th REALTOR you ask?

It was Deborah Armitage of Coldwell Banker Essential Realty.

HomeZilla also works with another 1000+ REALTORS in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland who share their listing with us each month.

To all the REALTORS who help make us a success… thank you!

Nova Scotia is still one of HomeZilla’s top market for real estate listings in Canada. We now have over 5900 Nova Scotia real estate listings. All provided via NSAR .

This past week, we have added three new offices to our feed:

• Costal Winds Realty, in Musquodoboit Harbour, Lunenburg, and Tantallon (HRM)
• Walt MacDonald Real Estate Ltd, in Liverpool
• Holm Realty, in Bridgewater

Thanks to these new partcipating offices we have added over 290 new listings to our website.

There are quite a few cool listing in their feed but here are three of my favorites:

• 3000 feet of water fron in Hubbards, Nova Scotia
• Amazing, off the grid house that is almost all windows looking at the ocean.
• In Vancouver, this would probably cost you $12 million dollars!

Nova Scotia has always been one of HomeZilla key test markets. Over 2 years ago, we started working with NSAR to get a 3rd party agreement so we could display MLS listing from participating offices.

This past month, we have added five new offices to our feed:

• The Real Estate Store, in Yarmouth
• Victory Realty, in Yarmouth
• RE/MAX Park Page, in Sydney
• Coldwell Banker David Butts, in Sydney
• Kennedy Realty and Appraisals, in Glace Bay

Thanks to these new partcipating offices and to all our existing partners.

We are happy at annouce that HomeZilla has started receiving listing from the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of REALTORS! Newfoundland becomes HomeZilla’s second province where were accept listing from real estate offices.

The first office to share listing with us is Sutton Newfoundland and Labrador. We send a big thanks out to them for being our first in Newfoundland.

Now that all the bugs are worked out of the process, we are going to start getting listing from other Newfoundland offices as well.

Check out our Newfoundland Homes for sale or the St. John’s homes for sale to see examples of our listings search pages.

Our goal of being Canada’s #1 website for doing real research has never changed and our neighbourhood information continues to grow. In Nova Scotia, we also work closely with individual real estate companies to promote their listings on HomeZilla. We do by working with the Nova Scotia Association of REALTORS; NSAR has been fantastic over the years.

This month, we have added a number of offices from New Glasgow. Please welcome them to the HomeZilla website.

• Coldwell Banker M.B. Green Realty
• Blinkhorn Real Estate
• H.L.M. Realties

Visit our website to see all of the New Glasgow Homes For Sale.

UPDATE Jan 14/2011:
Another New Glasgow office has started sharing listing with HomeZilla, RE/MAX New Style Realty.

We are happy to annouce a new feature for all the real estate offices in Nova Scotia who share their listings with us. Each month, agents will get intelligence on their listings. These reports will show detailed information about each individual listing. It will include:

• Number of people viewing the listings
• Where the visitors are from
• Search terms used to find their listings

REALTORS ® have said lots of good things about this report but the most common comment:

“This helps my clients understand how I market their property online.”

At HomeZilla, we deal with lots of data about marketing and researching real estate online. Making our data more useful for consumers and REALTORS is alway one of our top goals. If you are an office in Nova Scotia that wishes to share listing with HomeZilla just drop me an email: sandy [at] homezilla [dot] com and say “Please share my listing with HomeZilla”.

Last week, I attended Toronto’s RE Bar Camp and it was fantasic. During the day over 450 people came through the doors to participate. The organizers Richard Silver, Shirley Porter, Evan Sage and Brad Sage did a fantastic job. This was Toronto’s first RE BarCamp but it was run with the percision of a well oiled machine.

My talked was titled, ‘Neighbourhood Experts: not just Realtors ® any more’ and focused on how Realtors could help home buyers find more information about neighbourhoods; specifically in the days of iPhones and mobile search. The main part of the discussion focused on the Realtor being the ’source of the source’ (that line was suggeseted by one of the participants). Instead of just telling people where the best coffee shops, parks, etc are in the neighbourhood they can tell people where to go and find the information. Site like, of course, HomeZilla, Yelp, The Fraser INstitute for Ontario, etc.

It was great to meetup with some long time Twitters like: @oakvillerealtor (who is WAY taller than expected), @HeyAddy and @RichardWontorra . It was also good to catch up with some of the usual suspects like: @GeorgeONeill, and @chrisnewell, and BuzzBuzzHome .

Overall, the biggest surprise at #rebcto was the level of openness by Realtors. People were completely honest with the problems they had with social media. The result was fantastic as many people share their stories of success and failure which allowed everyone to learn a lot.

I can’t wait for the next Toronto RE BarCamp…

This Friday we are happy to annouce a new, fun and informative feature on HomeZilla.
The ‘Best and Worst’ of listing photos from our Nova Scotia feed.

On each slide show HomeZilla puts a ‘thumbs up/thumbs down’ button for visitors to cast their vote.

Each visitor gets a single vote per pictures. We tally the votes and create our list of the best and worst listing photos. Real estate agents have said ‘get rid of the Worst Listing Photos’ but my question to you is…. which link do you want to click first:

• Best of Nova Scotia Listing Photos
• Worst of Nova Scotia Listing Photos

Please give us lots of feedback…it is a new feature so we wants lots of it.