Is there room for yet another real estate listings website?

You bet, if it's packing a search engine as powerful as Google's.

That's what Douglas de Jager was counting on when he launched an American-version of DotHomes .

DotHomes uses super-powered search algorithms to pump out listings of homes as fast as you can type in a ZIP code.

And the real estate industry won't have to lift a finger or pay a dime to add listings.

Instead of relying upon brokers, agents and multiple listing services to supply listings, often for a fee, DotHomes has its own search machine to reach out and grab listings from wherever they appear online.

Just type in a city, ZIP code, street name, price range or other search terms and the listings, as well as rental units, pop up in an instant. The search is amazingly fast. You can narrow your search by the number of bedrooms, baths, how long the home has been for sale and other factors.

Each listing comes with a photo, a brief description, a Google locator map and a link directly to the original listing on the real estate agent's or broker's website.

The site has been dubbed "The Google Of Property" because it appears to be the property of Google.

It isn't, but there actually is a nod to Google in DotHomes' "I'm Feeling Wealthy" button. Click it and you get the most expensive listing in a city or neighborhood.

London-based BytePlay launched DotHomes in the U.S. after successes with other DotHomes sites in Great Britain and South Africa.

With approximately 1.5 million U.S. listings, DotHomes competes with websites like Zillow.com, Trulia.com and other alternatives to Realtor.com.

So how will DotHomes pay the dotbills?

De Jager hopes to persuade the real estate industry -- recently suffering declining commissions -- to advertise with Dot-Homes. He says a new business model is just what the market needs.

Last summer Brit newspaper The Guardian said DotHomes was one of its Top 10 dotcoms to watch. Late last year, Esquire magazine gave DotHomes the nod as a Best New Idea at its Man at the Top Awards.

Published: April 1, 2008

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.