Facebook Makes Big Push Into Rental Listings

Facebook Makes Big Push Into Rental Listings

Facebook plans to significantly expand its rental real estate listings section in its Marketplace as it attempts to better compete against Craigslist, eBay, and other e-commerce platforms.

Currently, Facebook allows individual homeowners to list their homes for sale on the Marketplace. But Facebook now seeks to beef up its rental offerings. It has developed partnerships with Apartment List and Zumper to serve up hundreds of thousands of rental listings that will be searchable to users while on Facebook’s Marketplace.

Facebook says it’s revamping Marketplace with new features. The initial rollout includes custom filters to search by, including location, price, bedrooms, bathrooms, rental type, square footage, and whether the unit is pet-friendly. It’ll also allow the ability to upload 360-degree photos for individual rental listings.

Users who find an apartment they’re interested in can fill out a contact form within Marketplace, and the property manager or real estate agent will then contact them directly.

Facebook said the changes to the housing rental section are being “driven by how people are searching and using the service.”

Facebook will not be participating directly in any transaction. It only will be connecting the listing owner and renter, Facebook said.

Facebook will also not be charging to list inventory on Marketplace. However, it does say there could be fees for using a third-party listing partner.

The feature is “gradually rolling out,” according to Facebook. It currently will only be available in the U.S. Learn more.

“Marketplace will continue to explore a variety of new opportunities to partner with businesses, in addition to optimizing the consumer-to-consumer product experience,” the company posted on its site last week.

Facebook boasts 2.07 billion monthly active users.

Source: “Facebook Launches Massive Push Into Real Estate Listings,” HousingWire (Nov. 13, 2017)

Buyers Want ‘Sold’ Photo Shoot After Closing

Buyers Want ‘Sold’ Photo Shoot After Closing

Instead of popping the champagne after your clients officially become new homeowners, how about setting up a photo shoot to help them document the occasion?

First-time buyers are showing greater interest in sharing their status as new homeowners with their peers online, so many real estate pros are staging photo shoots to help them capture and share the moment on social media. The photos may include props such as a “First Home” sign, or the buyers may pose with their hands forming a heart shape around their newly obtained house keys. Other real estate pros have even captured a couple dancing in the bedroom.

For example, Joey and Morgan Cabibbo, a couple who bought a home in Boerne, Texas, hired a professional photographer a few days after they closed on the purchase. The photographer captured Joey Cabibbo giving his wife a piggyback ride in front of their wooden garage door and stone three-arch entryway. The couple eventually shared on Instagram one of the photos depicting them sitting on their new front lawn with a “sold” sign.

Another couple, Blair Pomeroy and her husband, Matt, did a photo shoot in their new home in Florence, Ky., after they bought it in 2015. One photo showed them testing a paint sample on the wall by drawing an outline of a house. Above the drawing, Blair wrote “home sweet home” and drew three hearts coming out of the chimney. The couple used the photo on invitations to their housewarming party.

Real estate professionals say such post-closing photo shoots are great for their business. “It creates kind of like a domino effect,” Corey Maurice Gilmore, an associate broker at Capstone Realty in Huntsville, Ala., told The Wall Street Journal. “I see a lot of people—a lot of circles of friends—buy houses around the same period of time because they are seeing their friends make home purchases.”

Source: “Selling a House to Millennials? Bring a Camera, and Fake Eyelashes,” The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 9, 2017) (login required)

Glitch in Messaging Apps May Expose Calls

Glitch in Messaging Apps May Expose Calls

A glitch in nearly 700 iOS and Android apps could expose your private messages and calls.

Appthority, a mobile threat protection firm, discovered the flaw in the development of apps often used for communications by businesses. It published a report on its findings Thursday. The firm believes up to 180 million Android users could be affected by the hack, dubbed “Eavesdropper.” An unknown number of iOS devices also are at risk.

The vulnerability comes from 685 apps that use the Twilio Rest API or SDK for communication services, such as calling and messaging. Twilio allows developers to build those messaging features into their apps. But Appthority found that some developers using these APIs erroneously hard-coded users’ credentials into their apps’ code.

“The vulnerability is called Eavesdropper because the developers have effectively given global access to the text/SMS messages, call metadata, and voice recordings from every app they’ve developed with the exposed credentials,” wrote Appthority’s Michael Bentley.

Twilio is most often used in business environments and could expose a firm’s private information. Appthority found that about 33 percent of the apps in question were business-focused. One app enables sales teams to record audio and annotate discussions in real-time.

Appthority discovered the vulnerability in April and notified Twilio in July. By the end of August, the number of affected apps had dropped to 102 in the iOS App Store and 85 in Google Play. Appthority, however, did not publish a full list of apps that could still be vulnerable.

Source: “Vulnerability in Hundreds of Messaging Apps Leaves User Data Exposed,” TechSpot (Nov. 10, 2017) and “Researchers Find Hundreds of Easily-Breached Messaging Apps,” Engadget (Nov. 9, 2017)

Twitter Officially Doubles Its Character Count

Twitter Officially Doubles Its Character Count

Twitter’s approximately 330 million users can now send tweets on that are up to 280 characters in length, Twitter announced Tuesday. That is double its previous limit of 140 characters.

In September, Twitter tested longer tweets on a small group of users. The company says they found those with an expanded character limit spent less time editing their tweets, spent more time on Twitter, and interacted with more users on the social network.

“We saw when people needed to use more than 140 characters, they tweeted more easily and more often,” Aliza Rosen, a company product manager, wrote in a blog. “More space makes it easier for people to fit thoughts in a tweet, so they could say what they want to say, and send tweets faster than before.”

Twitter, which launched in 2006, first adopted the 140-character limit because it was close to the maximum that could fit in mobile text messages. Smartphones now allow for more expanded views.

Source: “Twitter Doubles Tweet Limit to 280 Characters,” Bloomberg (Nov. 7, 2017)

Investors Eye Parking Spaces for Bigger Profit

Investors Eye Parking Spaces for Bigger Profit

Real estate investors are utilizing parking spaces as lucrative investments in some major metros across the country. Buying up individual parking spaces is garnering greater interest among small investors who are looking for a low-maintenance investment with potentially big profits, The New York Times reports. For investors, parking spaces can offer a steady income, nearly zero maintenance, and limited damage to worry about.

“It’s a great investment idea for individuals or small groups, for sure,” Keith Bawolek, chief executive of Vermillion Realty Advisors in Chicago, told The New York Times. The company specializes in acquiring multimillion-dollar garages and parking for institutional investors. “There are opportunities in every market. You just have to be diligent and understand the right entry point for you as an investor.”

Real estate investor Betty Jones, for example, purchased three parking spots in Washington, D.C.’s Dupont Circle for $37,000 each last year. All three combined net her about $700 a month in profits, after paying property taxes and a garage fee.

The investment is “a lot less hassle than an apartment, too,” Jones told The New York Times.

Investors may see the largest parking space profits in several big cities. For instance, top average rates are about $600 a month in New York. The most expensive places in the U.S. to park are New York, Boston, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Seattle, and Chicago.

Investors are finding parking spaces may appreciate more whether the overall real estate market is softening or not—there’s a high demand for parking, they say. Some municipalities don’t offer enough parking in urban areas, leaving some residents willing to pay generously for a limited number of spots.

However, some experts warn the parking spot investment may have a limited future. For instance, if more people start driving electric cars, spaces without charging stations may become less desirable. Ride-hailing apps, like Uber and Lyft, may also limit the need for parking in some urban areas.

Source: “Parking Spaces That Could Make You Rich,” The New York Times (Nov. 2, 2017)