NUHABITAT’S ASKING-PRICE HISTORIES ARE BACK IN ACTION 
Home listing sleuths who’d been relying on historical asking-price data from NuHabitat (when most other consumer-facing MLS sources keep that info hidden) will be relieved to hear that the feature has been restored. Company founder Jeff Burke tells Swamplot the disappearance of the data from NuHabitat’s Price Tracker, which users began noticing last week, was inadvertent; an update pushed out earlier today brings it back. For logged-in users (only), NuHabitat’s Price Tracker provides histories of sales prices as well as details of former asking prices for properties currently on the market, in most cases even if they’ve been yanked over to a new MLS number. (Click on the dollar-sign logo underneath a property listing to see it; the screenshot above shows data for this Cambridge Green property featured on Swamplot last week.) A better dashboard for tagging and setting up alerts on multiple properties should be available to consumer users within a week or so, says Burke, following improvements in the “swipeability” of property images on mobile devices, which went live last month. [NuHabitat; previously on Swamplot]
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It’s all nice and dandy but NuHabitat only shows info for homes currently on the market and useless for larger research purposes.
commonsense…”It’s all nice and dandy but NuHabitat only shows info for homes currently on the market”. NuHabitat accommodates search for all property status in the MLS including Active, Pending, Closed, Withdrawn, Expired & Cancelled. We are continually working to develop useful consumer tools and would love your suggestions. Please let us know what would be useful for “larger research purposes”. -NuHabitat Team
Homesnap is a great website for this. You can look up houses that arent on the market and see what they sold for. However, im not sure how far back it retains the data and its not 100% of all homes.
Doesn’t zillow do this?
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And if this data is for “insiders only” (MLS subscribers), how are they allowed to share it publicly? Not that I’m not glad it’s out. I think all the stuff that they (MLS) try to forces as “agent only info” as a way to make otherwise worthless agents relevant, is a dying business model.
I’m assuming NuHabitat database gets populated from current entries in the MLS and only as far back as when the site went up, which is not a lot. Even Zillow now shows MLS broker entries for 99% of the properties and you can easily use the map feature to research a whole neighborhood. So, to make a long story short, NuHabitat does not offer any better tools and a lot less information than competitors. So, there’s no Value Added.
commonsense, have you even used NuHabitat? From your attempts to describe it, either you haven’t, or you have but you never found the price history feature. I used it when it it was in beta, and I was able to see the price history for the same house dating back over several MLS numbers, including closings and withdrawn listings, and the dates of the earlier listings pre-dated NuHabitat’s existence.
commonsense…your “assumptions” are incorrect. NuHabitat replicates the entire MLS database as far back as an MLS provides records, which in some cases precedes the year 2000. We also update in real-time with 99.9% accuracy. Additionally, if a NuHabitat client wants to create their own comparative market analysis with the use of actual sold prices, they have the ability to do so. Zillow is media company. They sell advertising to agents. As a “publisher” of real estate listings for that purpose, Zillow does not provide sold prices in the state of Texas or other non-disclosure states.
We appreciate you pointing out your “assumptions” and giving us the opportunity to share the “value” NuHabitat does, in fact, provide to our clients. We would love for you to share what you consider to be the three most important features you are looking for in a real estate search site. Your feedback is greatly appreciated. -The NuHabitat Team
I’m assuming that commonsense never actually looked at or used nuhabitat.com. I can search and find listings way back into 1995.
NuHabitat does show listing history as far back as is available BUT only for homes that are listed or have been listed recently. If you want a listing history for properties close by to a target property, it does not have that info. And last I used NuHabitat it did not have a map feature, you have to search addresses manually. Zillow list the same (for the most part) listing history as NuHabitat.
On the whole, MLS re-listing websites are a dime a dozen and frankly I haven’t found a single feature on NuHabitat that’s not available on others.
I just tried it again and searched several addresses that I know sold within last year but are not currently active on market and NuHabitat did not find them. It seem the database only repopulates if someone searches an address that is Currently Active and keeps that info. Those SOLD addresses do show up in HAR and Zillow.
Slam! NuHabitat also takes on trolls.
I use NuHabitat every now and then. I do agree that it can be difficult to find old properties at time, but I do like having the historical price info available to me.
Fernando & commonsense…this is great information. Let me first say that ALL Sold properties are represented in NuHabitat. You should not find a Sold property that was in the MLS that is not represented on NuHabitat as well. There are scenarios where Agents can mark the listing as “not for internet display in the MLS” which will remove the property listing. Fernando…If it’s hard to find Sold properties at times, then perhaps we could do a better job with UI/UX experience. We are always open to feedback. There is no doubt that if the data is suppose to be there, it is…however, if the experience is a challenge to find it, we can make improvements. Please let us know. As a startup, we appreciate your continued support! -The NuHabitat Team
NuHabitat: I’m still curious about HAR as a company, trying to keep “insider” information for agents only. In public remarks there is a lot you can’t say as they want much of the info to be for “agent remarks” only. I can’t post that a property has seller financing, or give them a better # to call than HAR has for my broker, or a host of other things.
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I know why they do this. With all the online tools, the agents that don’t really provide much value are becoming less and less relevant (good agents are still very much wroth their fee, but they’re rare)
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So that said… How are you guys able to post all the “insider only” stuff publicly? Do you have an agreement with HAR? Do you do it without their blessing but there is just nothing they can do about it?
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Again, I think it’s great that the info is out there. HAR and other MLSs shouldn’t try to artificially make agents more useful by trying to hide information that only they can get. But since that IS their current position, I’m wondering how your site is able to get and post this info.
Guys, it’s not that hard.
1. Log in.
2. At the top where it says DASHBOARD SEARCH INFO, click SEARCH.
3. In the search page:
a. Under STATUS, check Closed.
b. Under LOCATION, enter a range of street numbers, a street name, and a ZIP code.
c. Click Search.
4. In the results page, click on a property.
5. In the property page, click the $ to see the listing/sales history.
When I tried this with a range of xx00 – xx99 street numbers for my block, I got a bunch of results. I clicked on one and was shown price history for listings in 2014, 2005, and 2003.
Of course, this only shows MLS listings. For example, the most recent sales history for our house is not shown, because we bought our house outside of MLS. However, I can see how much the people we bought it from paid for it.
Without further snarky remarks, I do have to say that UI and especially the search function needs some revising. The address parsing algorithm is too restrictive and does not allow slight variations on address input. Unless you input the address exactly as it is in the database it will return no search results. Also the main search field should return something, no matter what it’s listing status is and not just say No results found just because it’s in a different status than you thought.
Cody…great question. HAR, as the MLS, is a member Association. So in reality, it’s not HAR that necessarily endeavors to keep the data private. It’s the paying members (Agents/Brokerages). NuHabitat is, in fact, a brokerage and once a consumer registers and agrees to our legal terms of use, they become a client. This does not obligate you to conduct the purchase or sale of a home through NuHabitat, however, we stand ready to refer you to an Agent or work with you directly if requested. It’s the intention of NuHabitat to facilitate or assist in the process of a real estate transaction. With that in mind, it’s within our legal right to provide this data. HAR and all its people are some of the most outstanding folks in the entire industry to work with. They are also one of the most liberal MLS’s with their data and I believe by year end you will see additional movement in data transparency provided by the Association, as well. We have worked closely with HAR to maintain the highest level of integrity for both the speed which data is delivered, as well as, the accuracy. We are also working to become a SaaS provider of our software, so if you’re an Agent, we can set you up with a simple site as well for the benefit of your clients. Hope this helps. All the best -The NuHabitat Team
GoogleMaster… Thank you very much. We’ll be working on CMA tools and other improved features as soon as we’re able :)
commonsense…great feedback. Yes, certain ui/ux elements can use improvement. We hope to establish focus groups in the near future to meet this need. Additionally, our intent is to expand our team and with additional resources will be able to implement things like Elasticsearch that make for improved internal indexing and richer results. Specific rules mandated by the NAR prevent us from the display of Sold, Terminated, Expired and Withdrawn listings without registration which is why we aren’t able to surface those properties prior to establishing a verified acct. Your feedback is much appreciated. -The NuHabitat Team
In other places I’ve lived real estate sales price info was always available via local government databases. I was pretty surprised that it’s not here.
Most places have laws requiring disclosure of sales prices. Texas does not. Hence all of the shenanigans required to get decent pricing information.
John (another one)…it is the case that in many states public record data will provide such information, however, Texas is a non-disclosure state, which means there is no requirement to provide sales data to the appraisal district, making it far more difficult to get this information. NuHabitat helps solve that problem. -The NuHabitat Team
Anyone know what has happened with NuHabitat??? The site is down. It is /was such a great resource!
Not sure what happened to NuHabitat. I always found it a pain to use. The search for me didn’t work very well unless I had an MLS number to go off of. This summer, it stopped pulling in old MLS records I had previously searched and it appears that it just stopped working. I’d like to see it come back, though.
Yeah, they’re shutting down. I emailed support and someone said they didn’t get enough traction to continue. In my opinion the horrendous search function was the Achilles heel.