10/05/08

Online shopping site Overstock.com, which allows thrifty Web surfers the ability to buy from a large selection of “excess inventory” merchandise, has extended its business model to feature real estate and automotive. It’s an odd mashup for a site that has made its name in selling furniture, watches, clothing and books. Nor is it clear from the site whether the homes and vehicles listed are indeed “overstock” as on the main site.

For example, on the Overstock real estate portal, listings link to third party sites, the same that you see on most other sites. Maybe the hook is the menu categories across the top of the screen, which include distressed, foreclosure, auction and FSBO properties.

The cars portal lives up to its overstock name a bit better. Dealers are required to price their vehicles below the market average. The site currently has just under 200,000 vehicles listed in what it calls the “Clearance Lot.”

The real estate site, by the way, has one nice feature we haven’t seen elsewhere: a large graph that plots out values of homes returned by the search compared to other properties on the market.