| Terrific Real Estate Search
Tools
By
Gary Price
The combination of online maps, satellite and aerial imagery
and real estate have spawned some fascinating and useful
search sites, allowing you to visit virtual properties all
around the world.
With the release of Google Maps and Google Earth last year
we saw numerous "mashups" that combine real estate listings
with aerial and satellite imagery. Examples include
HousingMaps in the U.S. and
OnOneMap in the U.K.
We've
also blogged about Google talking commercial real estate
data source, CoStar, working together.
Google licenses most of it's imagery from several sources,
including the USGS, which (anyone
can download for free) and
DigitalGlobe.
Many other companies, and even individuals, are working
with the real estate industry to power sites that merge real
estate listings, aerial imagery, and maps. Here's a quick list
to a few others.
HomePages is a free service that combines aerial imagery
and local data with real estate listings. It's a very
impressive service.
MSN is also involved in the real estate industry. A
Virtual Earth Blog post points out that they're working
with
LoopNet, a provider of commercial real estate data. Screen
caps are available and it's likely that they'll be adding the
birds eye imagery that's now part of
Windows Live Local. Microsoft licenses this imagery from
Pictometry.
GlobeXplorer provides a variety of satellite and aerial
imagery services to both consumers and real estate
professionals. One service the company released in the past
few months is called
Property Analyst, aimed at real estate professionals.
However, anyone can demo the service for free. The demo
uses San Francisco County data. Look for the
demo link on the right side of the page.
Funda.nl is a database that lists 75 percent of the Dutch
property for sale and gets 2.6 million visitors every month.
It will soon provide 15 million photographs growing it to 21
million images by year-end.
Every inch of Netherlands viewable online, offers a
profile of this service:
"Full-circle pictures taken at 20 meter intervals (about 65
feet) in metropolitan areas and every 50 meters (about 165
feet) in rural areas will show the entire country at street
level, with satellite images supplied by
Google Earth offering a bird's-eye view."
The local imagery comes from
Cyclomedia, a company out of Delft Technical University.
Another worthwhile service comes from
Skyline Software.
Free demos allow you to virtually "fly over" and then
zoom-in on a bunch of cities including Chicago, San Diego,
London and Sydney.
I haven't read of any real estate industry uses of
A9's BlockView street level imagery but I would think that
in some cases it might be of value. If you feel like wandering
the streets of Paris and other cities in France and Spain,
take a look at the street level imagery from
Pages Jaunes. Chris wrote
an introduction to this service in 2004.
It's great to see an aerial or satellite image but in some
cases you also want to know about the precise location you're
viewing.
TerraFly from Florida International University
does a great job of combining imagery with local data such
as census information, crime stats, stores and so on. More
about
TerraFly here.
And finally, although Yahoo doesn't offer any aerial
imagery, property rental listings from
Yahoo Real Estate provides
maps with listings placed directly on them.
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