Glassdoor.com, the latest Web startup by Zillow and Expedia founder Richard Barton, is live. The site features user reviews and ratings of companies and CEOs, as well as salary information.

The site is a bit sluggish today (maybe a lot of folks checking it out for the first time), and I got a lot of "Glassdoor is broken for now" messages this morning.

There is a real estate category at the site that includes brokerage companies Realogy and Re/Max, as well as builder KB Home. (No reviews yet for any of those companies.)

Yes, Zillow and Expedia are on the list.

Glassdoor launches

Life after eNeighborhoods for two former managers: WoolleyRobertson.com.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The National Association of Realtors is twittering about its Midyear Legislative Meetings and Trade Expo, an annual event in the nation's capital.

Twitter.com is a site that allows users to instantly share text messages with a Web audience, and can function as a sort of real-time, train-of-thought blogging platform.

Some twitter tidbits from NAR: "Strangest sight of the day: Iwo Jima and Einstein made out of chocolate, outside Thurgood Marshall North meeting room" at the conference site.

And the NAR Twitter site shares insight from Ebby Halliday, 97, founder and chairman of the board for Texas brokerage company Ebby Halliday, Realtors, who spoke on Tuesday: "reason for her longevity -- 'I don't drink, don't smoke and I don't retire' (big laugh and applause from the audience)."

NAR's conference Twitter site: http://twitter.com/nar_midyear, and you can follow the Twitter posts on mobile devices by texting "follownar_midyear" to 40404.

If you're not a Twitter member you can sign up at http://twitter.com.

More than half of folks who bought into the housing market in 2006 are now upside down, and in places like Las Vegas it's about nine out of ten -- if you want to take Zillow.com's automated home valuations at face value (see story).

Whether the numbers are spot on or not, the potential implications -- more foreclosure inventory as borrowers lose their motivation to keep up their mortgage payments -- are ominous.

Reports like these may alarm would-be bargain hunters who would otherwise be ready to jump back into the housing market, but are afraid to end up in the same boat. But every market is different, and it's likely many have already bottomed out or never tanked. What does it take to convince fence sitters that the (discarded) mantra of the National Association of Realtors ("It's a great time to buy") may actually be true?

Homethinking.com has launched an interesting site that helps realtors show clients how lenders behaved back in 2006, when many of the wildest excesses of the housing boom were in full swing. Mortgage.homethinking.com taps the Federal Reserve's Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) database, showing the percentage of subprime loans, average loan size, loan-to-income ratio, and other statistics at the county level.

The site's not perfect (see story), but it's the kind of innovation that makes you wonder if the folks at the Fed are sorry they didn't think of it first -- especially given that the Fed has created some pretty nifty dynamic maps that show the recent performance of subprime and alt-A loans in a database maintained by FirstAmerican CoreLogic LoanPerformance (see previous post).

Risk indexes that take into account past price volatility and economic factors like unemployment are perhaps the most sophisticated tool for peering into the future. PMI Mortgage Insurance Co.publishes one of the most comprehensive indexes (see story on the most recent numbers from PMI).

Ever heard of HUD's "Officer Next Door Home Sales Program"? It offers police officers a 50 percent discount off the list price of homes in "revitalization areas" from HUD's inventory of REO properties (OK, no disparaging remarks about how it's always been your dream to live in a revitalization area).

I'd never heard of the program before getting a press release about the upcoming six-year anniversary of the Web site GovBenefits.gov. The site's mission is a simple one -- to answer the question: "Are there government benefit programs available to help you?"

GovBenefits.gov's home page looks so cheesy, I thought for a minute it was a scam. But it turns out it's legit. Participating government agencies include HUD, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Small Business Administration, and others that may be in a position to assist home buyers or real estate firms. Search for housing programs, and you get a list of more than 50 (some look more promising than others).

One bone to pick: the "Officer Next Door" program has apparently morphed into the "Good Neighbor Next Door" program, and now includes teachers and EMTs. That's great, but the link to the "Officer Next Door" program from GovBenefits.gov hadn't been updated -- it took me to a dead page on the HUD Web site. Here's the link to the "Good Neighbor Next Door" program.

Zillow today announced the launch of a new feature at its Web site that allows agents and brokers to market themselves at pages that feature properties they previously sold.

"Your sold homes are already getting viewed a lot on Zillow, with (until now) nothing to distinguish them as your sold homes," the company announced in a blog post. The Virtual Sold Sign program is free for agents to use and is available at Zillow's listings feed page.

Agents and brokers who associate with a sold property are identified under a "Last Sold By" and can include their name, photo, and brokerage company.

Linking agents to recently sold properties is not a brand new concept. Homethinking.com allows users to view agents associated with active for-sale properties and recently sold properties, and AgentMatch.com also allows users to view past sales associated with specific agents. Those sites also allow users to view list prices compared to sold prices for properties.

Agents and brokers who use Zillow's new program can continue to market themselves through the properties they have listed for sale at Zillow's Web site after those properties are sold, and they can also associate themselves with properties that sold before Zillow's listings feed program launched.

A legal battle is ongoing as to whether online community site craigslist is afforded federal protections for discriminatory housing ads posted by the site's users.

Oral arguments were heard in the case Friday (and can be heard here). Watch for an Inman News article on Tuesday (see past article here).

The case hinges on the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals' interpretation of provisions in the Communications Decency Act, and on whether craigslist is considered a publisher, like a newspaper, that has associated liabilities for published content -- or whether the judges believe craigslist is more like a telephone service that has protections for users who use its services to conduct illegal activity (such as two bank robbers who plan a robbery using a telephone service or a bank of telemarketers who promote discriminatory messages).

The three judge's pondered aloud some of the issues in the case during the Friday arguments: like whether the staff at craigslist could adequately screen all of the millions of postings at the site for discriminatory content, whether screening could potentially go too far to block out words that aren't discriminatory by themselves (for example, should craigslist block the words "church" or "children" because an ad could potentially state "nearby Catholic church" or "no children allowed"),

The Real Estate, Real Competition and the Law blog has a take on the latest court developments here. Another fair housing-related lawsuit involving online site Roommates.com, is pending a decision, too.

A judge's financial interest in America Online has led a panel of three U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judges to toss out the conviction of former Homestore (now known as Move Inc.) CEO Stuart Wolff, and government prosecutors are weighing whether to ask another group of judges to reconsider the matter or to prepare for a completely new trial (see Inman News).

A jury convicted Wolff in June 2006 of 18 counts, ranging from conspiracy to falsify Homestore's books and records to lying to accounts and illegal insider trading. At the center of the trial were a number of so-called "triangular" financial transactions in which Homestore paid money to other companies that eventually circulated back to Homestore and was reported as revenues. AOL played a key role in these transactions, which amounted to about $67 million in revenue. During the trial, U.S. District Court Judge Percy Anderson acknowledged that he "owns stock in AOL" though another judge determined that Anderson's financial interest did not disqualify him from presiding over the lawsuit.

But in the Monday court filing, the panel of judges found that Anderson should have been disqualified from the case, and ruled to "vacate the conviction and sentence" and send the case back to the U.S. District Court with a new judge.

Home sellers and real estate agents looking for an extra push in today's more difficult markets have two new offerings coming their way today:

HomeGain's Home Sale Maximizer

Details count in today's market -- especially for sellers. Real estate agents know there are select things sellers can do to get their homes in tip top shape before listing that tend to aid in the speed of sale and get more interest from prospective buyers.

HomeGain today released an online home improvement evaluation tool, Home Sale Maximizer, that aims to help homeowners identify key repairs for getting a home ready for sale that can help fetch a higher sale price.

The company says it recently surveyed over 2,000 real estate agents nationwide and configured a list of the top 10 moderately priced home improvements that will benefit sellers most when they sell their homes.

RealBird Listing Publisher

RealBird today released Listing Publisher, which aims to help agents who may be struggling for leads to gain online traffic to their listings.

The tool aims to help agents market their properties by embedding their branded MLS search tools directly inside every published single-property Web site, which are then syndicated to more than 10 classified search portals.

Single-property Web sites have grown in popularity in the last year. Agents who use them say they streamline their marketing efforts for a single property.

Other vendors offering single-property Web site services include AgencyLogic and Single Property Sites. And listings syndication services are offered by Point2 Technologies and SubmitYourListings.com.

By now, you've heard Monday's news about IAC's split up of various businesses, including LendingTree, into five separate parts.

An interesting analysis at NYT's Bits blog, "Barry Diller and the Fallacy of IAC," notes that the breakup points to the old question about conglomerates on the Web:

"The bigger question is whether it is possible for anyone to build the General Electric of the Internet, as Mr. Diller was trying to do. The stock market won’t let it happen. When an Internet company becomes a hit, it grows so rapidly, and investors get so excited about its possibilities, that its value as an independent company can be enormous. Look no further than the $15 billion valuation Microsoft agreed to for Facebook."

Like many others LendingTree has suffered the ills of the housing market, reporting a third-quarter loss of $5.6 million, declining revenues and in May announcing a layoff of 20 percent of its staff. The company did well during the housing boom before Diller bought it, and Diller has a track record for successful spin-offs (think Expedia).

The question now is how will LendingTree fair as a standalone, given the wrath of a down market with Wall Street investors acting cautiously on real estate and mortgage-related stocks today?