Future of Real Estate Marketing » John-L.-Scott

The big news is they are taking advantage of Microsoft’s “polygon drawing tool technology” (now there’s a mouthful – say it 5 times fast) to allow consumers to draw an outline of the search area in which they would like to shop for homes.

J Lennox Scott, CEO of John L. Scott, says “it is almost like using an Etch-A-Sketch” to conduct your searches.

It’s a neat gimmick, designed by real estate technology provider Real Tech LLC. But it’s just that, a gimmick. I gave it a shot on their web site and while fun, it doesn’t really add much to making the search experience any more intuitive.

Overseas, Properazzi has tried radius based searches (see Properazzi Takes a Snapshot of Europe’s Real Estate Market). Closer to home, there have been many sites that have experimented with different takes on the map search experience (see New Real Estate Search Mashups) too.

What all of this shows me is that no one has really hit upon the right combination of features vs. functionality in a map-based search interface. The technology is still immature, despite becoming de rigeur in nearly all Real Estate 2.0 and new broker web sites.

Unfortunately, the more time you spend searching on these sites (and I’ve spent a lot lately) – the more you realize that map based searches are still quirky, buggy and sometimes downright annoying. Scroll wheels that jump around, or having to click all over the place to zoom in and out; some sites that allow you drag the maps around, others make it down right impossible to zoom in to where you want to be.

Map mashups have been a driving force behind Real Estate 2.0 – but still remain a fairly primitive way to search for real estate. Even sites like Trulia and Redfin, who have consistently led the pack in developing next generation real estate search sites, haven’t got a handle on what works smoothly and intuitively.

I suspect that there are going to take several more generations before searching for property on a map become a truly usable way to find a home.

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Microsoft Virtual Earth Delivers 3D Advertising

Joel Burslem — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 01:22:13 +0000

Microsoft is adding 3D maps to Virtual Earth, reports Marshall Kirkpatrick on Techcrunch. You can see an implementation on Live Search right now.

It is very impressive. This is a huge step forward for Live Search, giving it capabilities previously only found in desktop applications like Google Earth.

Check out this view of the Las Vegas strip (Click on each image for a closer look).

It does require downloading and installing a separate package in order to see the 3D imagery – but once you’ve installed it, the effect is stunning and you quickly forget you’re using an web-based application.

It was particularly thrilling to be able to overlay realtime traffic data onto the map and imagine the possibility of navigating other data sets in three dimensions (Zestimates, home for sale, etc.).

Virtual Earth 3D is currently only available in 15 cities and you’ll need a high end computer and the latest versions of Internet Explorer to view it (sorry, no Firefox).

What’s even more interesting is Seattle real estate broker John L. Scott and discount broker ZipRealty are part of a beta group of advertisers who have launched virtual billboards inside Virtual Earth 3D maps. The 3D billboards are clickable hyperlinks.

This is really moving online advertising into a whole new arena. I’ve written before about advertising in virtual worlds, but I’d always though Google Earth would be the first mover here. Kudos to the Microsoft Virtual Earth teams for delivering a knockout product.

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