rendermouse blog

One RIA the world desperately needs

My wife and I are looking for a new house. As most people do, we have a lot of criteria to base our search on. Schools, price, etc. I find it increasingly frustrating trying to use the online real estate search sites. They are are so unusable.

1. Fill out this huge form and input your requirements. The site will always ensure that some of your criteria are left out, so you can search on price but not schools, or schools but not age of home, etc.

2. Dig through the list of short descriptions, which also is guaranteed to leave out the important details you were searching for in the first place.

3. Click on a listing to see more detail. But where is the house? Click here for a completely new window with an html page containing a tiny map that gives you no bearing on the surrounding area.

4. You want to look at another house? Go back to step 3.

So you are always limited to searching one house at a time.

People who look for houses are looking for a SET OF RESULTS to dig through and COMPARE. All of the go here, go back, go here, go back page surfing doesn't make this process quicker or easier.

The solution:
Google maps should hook up with realtor.com and let people browse homes for sale from a MAP VIEW, not a database query form. I could pick a spot on the map, and it would show me all of the homes for sale in the surrounding area. I could rollover each flag on the map, and see how big the house was, the price, and age of the house. I could click on the flag to get more detail if I want.

It would make comparing the result set a lot easier, and would bring a lot of the search criteria into a visual context.

What are your favorite real estate search engines? Why do you like them?