Neighborhood Search Comes Back
Don’t call it a comeback
I been here for years
Rockin’ my peers
Puttin’ suckers in fear
- LL COOL J, Momma Said Knock You Out
Neighborhood research sites come and go. But none of them have seemed to stick around for very long.
Word that Homethinking has added some very cool neighborhood matching tools excites me as a technology watcher, but I have to wonder, sadly, if it will ever get used.
On the surface neighborhood research seems to make perfect sense. People should want to learn more about the neighborhood they want to live in. What are the schools in the area? How do they perform? How close is the nearest Starbucks? How walkable is the neighborhood (see Measuring Walkability with Walk Score)?
But the graveyard of neighborhood research tools is also littered with recent attempts to make this work.
The ghosts of Neighboroo (see Neighboroo Adds New Data To Neighborhood Research) and Neighborhoodmatch (see Finding the Perfect Location with Neighborhoodmatch.com) still haunt us. High profile plays like YourStreet that are still with us have radically shifted gears (see Yourstreet is Now Empty) – and even Terabitz switched its focus to becoming an enterprise web site provider.
Still, that doesn’t stop others from trying:
Homezilla is a new site north of the border that takes on neighbourhood (Canadian spelling, natch) search. The overall experience is pretty usable – results are dynamically generated and plotted on a Google Map. I really liked how you can layer in different data sources and that there were several ‘unique’ choices I could pick; the availability of liquor stores and bars were especially appreciated.
Problem is – the data was poor to terrible. A search in my old neighborhood in Vancouver revealed neither the elementary school I went to nor any of the pubs that I frequented later in life.
Nevertheless, I liked the experience. Largely because Homezilla continues the encouraging trend of search tools adding ‘real world’ filters that people can actually use in their searches; like proximity to transit options (see Estately Comes to Portland).
(Speaking of which, would one of the search portals please layer in access to FIOS and/or 3G cellular coverage as a search criteria. Geeks like me who are looking for a new home demand it.)
UpMyStreet is a British web site that tries a slightly different approach – rather than a fancy map mashup, UpMyStreet parses all of its neighborhood data into paragraph form. It creates a much more academic experience but one that is frankly, a bit muddled. I found it a bit confusing to navigate and the advertising very distracting.
That said, it was a tool that I could see myself using – at least tangentially alongside another search site.
The problem with any of these sites, may very well be that neighborhood research is only a small and limited part of the real estate search process for some (if at all) and one that is quickly overtaken by the hunt for a specific home.
And so I suspect that without having listing data attached to the site, a dedicated neighborhood search tool simply can not go very far.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a need for this type of information. I just think it means it’s up to the property search sites to do a better job of helping consumers decide which neighborhoods fit their needs.
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Sandy | Oct 16, 2008 | Reply
Thanks for the post Joel! Sorry to hear you weren't happy with our data. As with any startup company we are still growing and improving. We add new data every day so next time you try HomeZilla we should have your pubs and the school.
We have over 98% of schools in Canada and are always looking to get that number to 100% in the future we will be asking people to help grow our data by contributing data if interest to them.
Talk soon,
Sandy
MIchael Wurzer | Oct 16, 2008 | Reply
I just posted last night on the issue of organizing listing data by geography. Neighborhoods are tricky business and there hasn’t been a good solution to date, but I think the combination of some of the national data sets with dynamic input from real estate professionals could be the key to defining a national set of neighborhood data that could persist and allow collection and tracking of listings and related stats.
Miami Title Company | Oct 17, 2008 | Reply
Neighborhood sites are a great way for potential buyers to follow up with an area they liked, and to make the final decision to buy there. Hopefully in the future as the technology gets easier to use and everybody is more familiar, there will be great neighborhood sites for a lot more neighborhoods.
Galen | Oct 17, 2008 | Reply
Joel, I love referencing that LL Cool J lyric. I am so angry you used it on your blog; now I will have to wait a few months before using it myself.
Travis | Neighboroo | Oct 17, 2008 | Reply
Hi Joel. Boo! It’s the ghost of Neighboroo.
I just wanted to chime in my two cents after my experience in creating a neighborhood search service. We started as a market research firm selling data, so naturally our consumer website was very number crunchy. It started as an experiment that lead our small team into real estate marketing. One of the original strategies is similar to city-data.com where interesting figures would lead to discussions, great fodder for SEO, which would produce leads for agents. However, getting this virtuous engine going was quite challenging without the agents’ involvement.
I suggest neighborhood search websites or features within sites to engage local agents (which some do). It’s the most useful given that abstracting a neighborhoods’ qualities without overwhelming the user or oversimplifying it is a tough task to master.
I like the tools out there for neighborhood browsing, and I use many of them when I travel when booking hotels. Ironically, when I was shopping for a house myself, I just ignored all the sites, flew to the city and drove around.
Brandon Property Management | Oct 19, 2008 | Reply
I think because most real estate sites provide so much neighborhood info already is the reason you have seen these sites not as prevalent. I guess these sites seem to getting beter and even more information. I will have to check into them. Thanks for the info.
Shawna | iShop Greenwood Indiana Real Estate | Oct 27, 2008 | Reply
Hey There, it’s great to see people writing about neighborhood blogging. I have really been wanting to put some great neighborhood links on my site but am just getting overwhelmed and haven’t been able to get started. Any suggestions???