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September 25, 2006

Real Estate Sites

Over the past couple of years I have been looking at buying some land. Actually, the idea is more of a dream than a reality but without dreams who are we? The point is that I am utterly amazed at how poor the metadata and search utility is out there for real estate.

For example, lets suppose I wanted to buy 20-50 acres of land within 2-3 hours of my current residence and a specific price range. Sounds simple, right? The largest real estate site Realtor.com forces you to enter a city with no indication of distance. They don’t allow you to enter key elements of such as acres, lakes, or terrain. They force you to locate 10-20 major zip codes or cities, and do the scroll battle. Scrolling though hundreds of results is a major pain in the meta-butt.

Land specific sites are not much better. Although the functionality varies by site, the majority fail to offer a solid search utility. Have we drifted to the other end of the spectrum by controlling the end user experience so much that we alienate many?

Posted by Todd at September 25, 2006 1:50 PM