A new home search site has recently hit the Internet, www.Roost.com.

I was contacted by a reporter at the Washington DC Examiner to discuss the new site for a story she was doing about the Roost.com introduction.  We spoke at some length, and I’ll wager she did the same with the CEO of Roost.com.  Both of us got one line in the article.  At least the one that appeared on the Examiner’s Internet site.  If anyone from the Baltimore/Washington area has seen the print version, I’d be interested to know if it is the same as the Internet version.

The quote attributed to me in the article is accurate.  Roost.com does have a unique way of narrowing the property criteria of a search using sliders.  And, at this point, the site is very fast once the global search is completed.  It is also possible to narrow the search by neighborhood or school district.   In general, I think the site is clean and user-friendly.

Roost.com is a Lead-Generator

The issues I discussed with the reporter that didn’t make it into the article, however, have to do with the lead-generating aspect of Roost.com. 

Here’s the good news:  The broker or agent who sponsors listings in a specific town do get links directly to their website.  The bad news is that the site is set up as a Pay Per Click (PPC) operation.  Every time a visitor clicks through to a professional’s website, a fee is charged. 

According to the reporter, there will be multiple brokers and/or agents sponsoring listings in a city, and those sharing sponsorship in a city will be rotated in terms of who appears on the search result pages.  The algorithm will have something to do with how much of a presence someone has on the site.   So, it seems to me that the little guy won’t show up too often, but since it is PPC fee, they may not be charged when they’re not visible.  I don’t know if there is a flat service fee in addition to the PPC.

Don’t Give Up on Your SEO

For me, the bottom line is that Roost.com does have some slick features for visitors.  Time will tell how it fares against Zillow, Trulia, and the myriad other home search sites on the Internet.

But, in the end, from a professional’s perspective, it is still a lead-generator.  And, in my opinion, paying a lead generator is never as effective as building up the ranking of your own website so that you have control over your own destiny.

I’d keep an eye on Roost.com, but I don’t see how the site hitting the scene represents an outstanding exposure vehicle for real estate professionals.