Is Windermere’s the best MLS map mash-up so far . . . ?
By: Greg Swann,
Phoenix Real Estate,
Post Archive,
RSS FeedPosted: Wednesday, September 13th, 2006, 6:17 pm MST
Category: Blogging, Disintermediation, Marketing, Real Estate, Technology
Dustin at Rain City Guide is pointing to this new Windermere MLS map mash-up.
“Ho hum,” you say. “Been there. Done that. Gave the tee-shirt to my kid.” Maybe so. My take is that this is the best map-based MLS search that I have seen so far, but I am not confident that I have seen it all.
Things I like:
- Almost no wasted screen real estate
- A super-accurate zoom feature
- Excellent Ajaxification without waiting between every change in settings
- Details are exhibited in a tabbed section using about 25% of the browser
The sliders at ShackYack.com are very cool, but they’re painful to use because everything refreshes in real time — plus ShackYack wastes huge portions of the screen, as do Trulia.com and PropSmart.com. Are there any other players in this same league?
Windermere has MLS feeds from wherever it has franchisees — 35 systems so far, mainly in the Western United States.
Go play with it. My take: Totally rocks…
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[...] BloodhoundRealty.com Home Page There’s always something to howl about « Is Windermere’s the best MLS map mash-up so far . . . ? [...]
It does rock. I want one. The map interface is intuitive, the tab thingys are cool and it’s probably the speediest map-based search I’ve come across.
I had a little trouble last night with the details lying on top of some SQL debugging dump. I left a comment on that and it’s already been fixed.
Greg, I think you’ll like the product we’ll be rolling out soon…
> Greg, I think you’ll like the product we’ll be rolling out soon…
If mash-ups be the food of commerce, play on!
And to you and any developers who wander by: I am a broker. I have feed privileges to one of the largest MLS systems in the country…
Pretty nice. I’m looking for one that works for austin/dallas, the only one I know of for austin is slow and uses mpaquest which I hate (escapesomewhere.com).
Dear Anon (why be anon?) – If you check out the comments on a recent post of mine (from Jeff at Zooven.com) you may find something of interest for Austin… It’s a Google Maps based search.
Crud, the link didn’t work. Try copying/pasting this:
http://www.buygilberthomes.com/?p=124#comments
[...] Dustin Luther, Greg Swann and Joel Burslem take a critical eye to Windermere’s new map based MLS search. It’s a beauty. The techno geeks at Century 21 would do well to emulate this thing. The techno geeks at Century 21 should…. oh, never mind. I’ll save it for another day. [...]
I’m not as impressed with Windermere’s map search. My searching taster may be different than some, but I don’t like when I scroll over a home and the photo pops up and covers the other homes on the map- I don’t care for the same Trulia/Google knockoff icon, and although I appreciate simple, which is paramount in application, I also appreciate design, and their map and design looks bland to me.
My map is still a work in progress, and next week I’ll be launching a modified map/homepage that I like quite a bit. I’ll let you know when it comes out and would appreciate any feedback.
It’s a challenge trying to be fresh and innovative and keep things as simple as possible, but also giving the consumer something that is fast and smooth… it’s also really expensive…
> My map is still a work in progress, and next week I’ll be launching a modified map/homepage that I like quite a bit. I’ll let you know when it comes out and would appreciate any feedback.
You won’t have to ask twice!
> It’s a challenge trying to be fresh and innovative and keep things as simple as possible, but also giving the consumer something that is fast and smooth… it’s also really expensive…
I can;t approach this like an ordinary consumer, of course, but I search a whole lot more for tile roofs than I do for visual locations on a map. My major complaint with everything that is not a true MLS system is the lack of choice and flexibility in the available fields. I want ‘pool’ AND NOT ‘above-ground pool’ every day…