I recently heard about the business of teaching people how to form syndicates to buy "short sale" homes and then flip those homes for a profit. (Short sale == sell house for less than the loan value.) If you pay $$ to a guru you can get standardized contracts, hand holding, etc. Example blog post from someone in this area:
http://cawholesaledeals.com/blog/tag/short-sale-syndication/
Leaving aside the morality of these gurus...
Wonder if this would be a thin edge of the wedge area to start with aggregating data on house sales? People are already meeting in person and swapping information about where are the sales, which ones do they want to syndicate, so you have less of a bootstrapping problem. You could also provide ways for people to signal interest in a particular home deal, or provide a commission to people who bring in data on a home that is later successfully syndicated/sold even if the reporter isn't in on the deal. Maybe there are other approaches. Then grow from that segment to more real estate data if the model proves out.
Leaving aside the morality of these gurus...
Wonder if this would be a thin edge of the wedge area to start with aggregating data on house sales? People are already meeting in person and swapping information about where are the sales, which ones do they want to syndicate, so you have less of a bootstrapping problem. You could also provide ways for people to signal interest in a particular home deal, or provide a commission to people who bring in data on a home that is later successfully syndicated/sold even if the reporter isn't in on the deal. Maybe there are other approaches. Then grow from that segment to more real estate data if the model proves out.