Google Gets Into Real Estate

Google appears to be beta testing a new feature for real estate listings. If you type in "real estate", "homes for sale", or "apartments for rent" in the search box, in addition to search results, you'll get a box that allows you to enter an address and search for homes for sale or rent nearby. The feature is combined with Google Maps. There is a nice blog entry about it here with some good screen shots. A Motley Fool article, which mainly talks about the stock market implications of this to other web-based real estate stocks, mentions that people can list their homes for free on the service.

All in all, I think this is a good move. As the article states, "when Google moves, things change." This move could help me as a real estate investor for renting houses and finding deals. It could also help me as a paper investor, since I own Google stock :-)

FYI, the first couple times I tried to find this Google feature by typing "homes for sale" in the search box, it didn't appear. Then I tried "real estate" and it showed up. Now it shows up consistently when I enter "homes for sale." Maybe as part of their beta test, they limit how often the option shows up.