What’s outside the window?
I’ll be adding these photos to my listings soon - what’s outside the window of the house, what the street looks like, what’s to the left and right … not just because a client mentioned it to me the other day, but also because Google just released Panoramio:
Have you ever looked at a photo and wondered what was beyond its edges - just what was left of that castle or what the facade of Notre Dame looks like from close up? We certainly have, which is why I’m happy to tell you about a new feature we’ve just introduced for Panoramio, Google’s site for sharing geo-tagged photos.
Panoramio enables photographers to geo-locate, store and organize their photographs and to view those images in their geographic context. You may already have seen photos from the Panoramio layer while zooming around in Google Earth or Google Maps (just click the “more” button), but have you visited the Panoramio website? Now, when browsing photos on the site you can explore multiple images of a particular location in a more seamless way.
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I only wish we could integrate this into the MLS … but we’re relatively limited in the photos we can upload and then we’d likely run into the “you can’t have your own branding!” issues … Google’s (etc’s) flexibility in this arena may be one of the downfalls of the MLS as we know it. (and that might not be a bad thing)
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Do you Google people you meet?
I do. Ted Demopoulus does. It’s simple business intelligence.
- If I’m in a meeting with my laptop open and my phone rings with number I do not recognize, I’ll quickly Google the number (it’s amazing how many Realtors’ cell phone numbers aren’t found via Google) - if it’s a client and it’s important, I’ll likely leave the meeting* to take the call.
- If the “person” calling shows up on whocalled.us or whocallsme.com - there is a very small chance that I will answer.
- Frequently I’ll Google someone’s email address - and it’s amazing how effective this can be.
Google me - with or without quotes.
I expect to be Googled.
*I love volunteering and working on various Realtor committees - they bring value to my business in a variety of ways - but if a client calls while I am in Strategic Planning for the Virginia Association of Realtors, my and my clients’ Strategic Plans come first.
What will MLS data standards do for the consumers?
Hopefully, all of our lives - buyers, sellers, Realtors - will become more efficient.
With the recent talk of how forthcoming data standards are going to make property data sharing more efficient and thus better for consumers and Realtors, here is one of my requests -
I’d love to see a (Google) Mashup (or the MLS would be even better, and I think a no-brainer) providing an overlay of school districts. Albemarle County School Districts are here and the City of Charlottesville’s school districts are here. Even better, make it so that registered users could make their own pages with all their important locations to help them organize their thoughts and help their Realtor representatives better understand their thoughts and thought processes.
But here’s a problem - Albemarle’s maps are PDFs and the City’s districts are encased in a Java-heavy page. What’s the solution?
The number I have heard of common fields to be shared is around fourteen - methinks there’s some work to be done with this. I could think of fourteen fields pretty quickly …
Price, address/lat-long/parcel ID, bedrooms, baths, living room, dining room, fireplace, pool, garage, lot size, view, fenced yard?, flooring type?, room locations, laundry?, paved?
Ok, that’s 16 from a stream-of-consciousness, but you get my point.
From a consumer point of view - what are the most important pieces of data that help you get an initial picture of the property?
Google 411 gets better
1-800-GOOG-411 has saved me a few times, and if I didn’t have a GPS in my car, I would find this even more useful -
Today, your GOOG-411 experience just got better: during your call to GOOG-411, just say “map it”, and you’ll get a text message with the details of your search plus a link to a map of your results right on your mobile phone.
Having the information texted to my phone was mighty useful. This is even better.
We may never need to implant RFID chips into our shoulders. Google will already know where we are and where we’ve been and probably predict where we’re going next (before we know ourselves).
Technorati Tags: google
Friday roundup
Zillow gets pillowed … And Realtor.com’s CEO goes Springer
The Difference between good Realtors and bad agents
Buying a new construction home? Bring your own tape!
Housing Starts rebound (national) … but building permits are down (PDF)
Zillow uses their prominence to discuss eminent domain. Good for them, and thank you.
A Super Wal-Mart in Greene? But … they expect people to consistently show up for work. Who wants to work there? I kid. If they would just open a Super-Walmart in Greene and close down the one in Charlottesville …
More home loans go sour - yet some lenders continue to loosen lending standards
Ten Innovations that will reduce the amount of energy we use
You think Google’s not benefiting from Trulia’s growth?
… Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia … showing me his referer logs, and they definitely show that Google sends more traffic his way than any other search engine. … Courtesy of Robert Scoble.
Finally, listening to CNBC this morning, Joe Kernen said referencing the inability to compete with Google - “Google are going to be the government, not a company.”
Technorati Tags: real estate, realtor.com, trulia, zillow
Fun with Google Trends
Local builder -vs- national builders in the Charlottesville area
Charlottesville -vs- Albemarle
MLS -vs- FSBO - interestingly, all of the top cities are from Canada.
In essence, Google Trends gives another means by which to present one’s argument with one’s own manipulation of statistics.
Technorati Tags: google trends
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This work by Jim Duncan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. -
