Google appears to be beta testing a new feature for real estate listings. If you type in "real estate", "homes for sale", or "apartments for rent" in the search box, in addition to search results, you'll get a box that allows you to enter an address and search for homes for sale or rent nearby. The feature is combined with Google Maps. There is a nice blog entry about it here with some good screen shots. A Motley Fool article, which mainly talks about the stock market implications of this to other web-based real estate stocks, mentions that people can list their homes for free on the service.
All in all, I think this is a good move. As the article states, "when Google moves, things change." This move could help me as a real estate investor for renting houses and finding deals. It could also help me as a paper investor, since I own Google stock :-)
FYI, the first couple times I tried to find this Google feature by typing "homes for sale" in the search box, it didn't appear. Then I tried "real estate" and it showed up. Now it shows up consistently when I enter "homes for sale." Maybe as part of their beta test, they limit how often the option shows up.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Google Gets Into Real Estate
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3 comments:
Pretty interesting.
What I'd like to see them do is hook into Realtor.com's database (or, better yet, regional MLS's) and allow users to do all kinds of nifty searches. That would be awesome. And some future revision of the service would integrate area demographics, etc. Now that would be awesome. I wouldn't even mind paying a monthly fee for that kind of service. ;-)
Sorry. Got carried away with the "awesome"s. :-P
There is another great article/discussion on the Google/Real Estate idea posted on Rain City Guide. It offers a comparison between Google and the infamous Zillow. Check it out, and be sure to browse all the comments: http://www.raincityguide.com/2006/03/22/why-google-base-matters/
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