According to this morning's announcement of the new feature in the Google LatLong Blog, a survey conducted just before Google Street View launched in the U.K. found that a fifth of respondents had used Street View in their househunting efforts.

Bing Maps recently added similar features using Oodle, and our remaining contention with services such as this is that they often aggregate content from various listing services and then users end up with a thousand map points plotted to the center of a city, as lazy landlords simply put down the central zip code. To that end, Google offers a guide for realtors and real-estate professionals on why and how to use Google in listing properties online.

As with any other like feature on Google Maps, the listings on its real estate overlay (or properties, if you're in the U.K.) automatically update and refresh when you zoom and pan around the map. Listings are also filtered according to user setting, meaning you can choose how many bedrooms, sale or rental price, and any other number of standard characteristics.

So, would you like one loo or two?

Android Users Get Extra Features

With the new app, Android users benefit from their phone's technology in order to access a few additional features. For instance, with the new Google Street View option, users are able to see curbside photos of all the homes in a particular neighborhood, whether or not they're for sale or rent. This is a great benefit for mobile home shoppers who want to know more about the neighborhood where a particular house is located. Is it on a busy street? Are the other houses nearby in good repair? Does it have sidewalks? And so on.

Another unique feature for Android users is voice search. Users can speak the address, neighborhood or city into the mobile application and be taken there on the map.

The Zillow app works whether you're searching for new homes from your living room or whether you're driving around looking at houses. If the latter, Zillow taps into the phone's GPS to place your location on a map and show you the nearby home data.

It's also worth noting that you don't have to be a potential homeowner to take advantage of Zillow. In mid-December, the company added rental listings to their online and mobile services, a savvy business decision in a down economy where many are now choosing to rent until the market stabilizes.

Get It Now

You can see the Android application in action over here on YouTube or you can download in now for free via www.zillow.com/android. If you have neither an iPhone or Android phone, you can alternately access Zillow.com via its mobile site at Zillow Mobile.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/popular_real_estate_app_zillow_debuts_on_android.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/popular_real_estate_app_zillow_debuts_on_android.php Google Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:41:57 -0800 Sarah Perez Yesterday, Google announced that it was expanding its real estate listings on Google Maps. In an interview with The Age, Andrew Foster, a Google product manager, explained that Google was rededicating itself to this market because it found that a growing number of people are using the Internet to search for a new home. Currently, according to data from Hitwise, Google Maps is only a very small player in the online real estate market and it only sends about 2% of its traffic to real estate web sites. The current market leaders are Realtor.com, Zillow, and Yahoo Real Estate.

It Works, But The Competition is Better

When you are looking for a house, location is a key factor, and just like Zillow, Google Maps puts a house's location at the front and center of its presentation. Looking at houses on Google Maps, however, also quickly makes it clear that Google is only aggregating data from listing web sites and getting its data from brokers who update their listing on Google Base. This means that listings on Google Maps are not necessarily as up to date or as comprehensive as those you could find on similar services.

It is also quite obvious that real estate listings aren't the focus of Google Maps. Google's competition generally offers far more options when searching for a house (type of house, lot size, year built, etc.), and does a better job at displaying other important information about a house and the neighborhood (quality of local schools, for example).

While it is good to see that Google is re-dedicating itself to the real estate market, this is hopefully only the beginning of the company's efforts, because in its current state, these listings on Google Maps are a nice addition to a great product, but don't hold up as a real estate offering in its own right.

Today, the Real Estate Marketing Report Card is being launched in an effort to help sellers monitor their online reach. Rather than having to rely on an agents word that the property information has been placed on the Web, sellers can now easily check for themselves and make sure they're getting the best bang for their buck.

Once you've entered the property details, street, city, state, zip code, and price, the
REMRC searches across the Web and looks a a variety of real estate portals including Trulia, Google Base, Vast, Zillow and FrontDoor for details on where the property is listed.

The results appear as a grade; getting an A means your property has decent exposure on the Web; a D means you need to take some action. In addition to the grade, the site will provide a link to your listing on the various sites so you can see how well or how poorly your property is represented.

Potential Issues

One thing we found lacking in our test was the ability to easily share results. For instance, there is no way to e-mail the report easily (of course you can take a snapshot), nor can you link to a result page. The tool uses AJAX to generate the report, and while this offers a Web 2.0 experience, it also means the URL does not change and anyone wanting to view the report will need to input the data again.

However, in a follow up email, founder Andy Hagans explained that they're currently looking at ways to add this functionality over the next few weeks.

Given the upheaval in the financial markets and weak/declining home sales across the nation, we think this is a useful and timely tool. Property sellers now more than ever need to be aware of what they're paying for, and with this tool they now can be.

How It Works

From here, there are two tabs available: "Find Homes" and "Home Values." To look for a home, you can search by entering in criteria such as city, state, zip, minimum and maximum price, and number of beds and baths. You can also specify via checkboxes whether you want to see new listings only (new in the last 7 days) or open houses listed first.

The search results appear in an easy-to-read scrollable format that surprisingly manages to fit 8 per page. The listings show price, number of beds/baths, location, realtor, and even a photo. To see more information, you only need click the "View" button.

For anyone who has ever been house-hunting, you know that sometimes what you need isn't a set of listings, but a general idea as to whether the neighborhood you're touring is even in your price range. For that, there's the "Home Values" tab, which will display the prices of the homes in a certain address.

See it in action:

This iPhone platform represents a further embrace of modern technology by Coldwell Banker. Earlier this year, they became the first national real estate company to deliver listings to in-car GPS devices through Dash Navigation. That device integration let drivers pull up Coldwell Banker listings, map them, and get directions. Now with the iPhone app, they've made another step towards engaging the gadget-loving consumer...a wise move perhaps since those with the shiniest of toys may be the only ones who can afford to move right now.