Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the most innovative of the map-based real estate search portals is ShackPrices.com. A house is a house and a neighborhood is a neighborhood, but a home is a lifestyle, and ShackPrices is doing more than anyone else to integrate lifestyle data in its databases.
The latest innovation is showing proximity to present or future mass transit services in its search results:
Beginning today, home buyers can search from thousands of homes for sale near bus stops along one or more King County Metro Bus lines or near Sound Transit Rail stops. Home buyers can combine their search for homes near mass transit lines with a variety of other factors including price, size, and keywords using ShackPrices’ intuitive map search.
“By letting home buyers search for properties near current and future transit stops, we are giving the public a valuable tool to find homes that fit an environmentally friendly lifestyle,” said ShackPrices.com co-founder Galen Ward, “Most importantly, we’re giving home buyers the opportunity to find a home that should substantially increase in value when transit lines are complete. Homes within 500 feet of rail lines are worth as much as $40,000 more than similar homes just a little farther away.”
I, personally, don’t like taxpayer-subsidized mass transportation, but “people like pie.” In the urbanosphere, proximity to mass transit is a very common question. Answering this question visually and automatically would seem to be painfully obvious — except no one else is doing it.
My frank assessment: ShackPrices.com should post a “Make Me Move” price to see if anyone in Seattle has brains enough to write an eight-figure check.
Technorati Tags: disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
Tony says:
very innovative use of geolocation data…I love it!!!
Tony
May 10, 2007 — 2:38 pm