gHomes — Seattle Area MLS on Google Maps May 3, 2005
In my continual quest to give my clients better and more useful real estate information, I’m experimenting with posting the home sale data over Google Maps and I’ve finally got an alpha version ready for limited public consumption. There are no forms to fill out or hoops to jump through, all you have to do is click on this link:
http://www.RainCityGuide.com/gHomes/
Some notes on the the project:
- MLS data includes all of Seattle, Kirkland, Bellevue and Redmond
- The coding is not very advanced stuff (I’m not much of a coder at all!), so be merciful in your comments!
- The database is missing some MLS listings for a variety of reasons and is only updated once a day. Some listings are missing because the agent filled in the address wrong, while other listings are missing because the agent purposefully did not include the address (this is very common on VERY expensive listings)
- This is meant to be a fun toy to test out the limits of what’s possible in the real estate industry. Please use it accordingly.
- Make sure you turn on the “Satellite” view
- The easiest way to zoom in on an area is to select and icon from that area and then use the scroll bar to zoom into it!
- Initially, I plan to update the data on a daily basis
Other great google mapping sites include:
- http://www.paulrademacher.com/housing/ (includes Craigslist housing data over Google Maps)
- DASNET (allows you to view more detailed terraserver aerial tiles over Google Maps interface)
- http://mygmaps.com (simple interface to begin posting data on Google Maps)
- http://www.blogwise.com/googlemaps/ (Lists blogger locations over Google Maps
Improvements I’d like to make:
- Add higher quality aerial images a la DASNET
- Add condos
- Provide a link to additional listing information directly from google minipages
- Add more areas in the Puget Sound
Thank you Louis, Ken, Phil and Paul for your help and inspiration!
Of course, if you are interested in seeing any of these homes (in person!), just let me know! Enjoy!
http://www.RainCityGuide.com/gHomes/
Sphere: Related Content- Posted in : Buyer Information, General Real Estate, Moving to Seattle, Real Estate Search, Seattle
- Author : Dustin
Comments»
[...] ine real estate search. (Jul 28) What is Zillow up to? : Background on Zillow. (May 3) gHomes: Seattle area MLS on Google Maps: Where I presented the first Google Maps hack to show MLS data. As [...]
[...] The uptick in May ‘05 was almost definitely due to my release of gHomes (now replaced by this home search). [...]
[...] About the same time I started blogging about real estate, Google came out with gmaps. In order to build a little buzz around my new site, I built a little app on top of the their platform that put NWMLS data on top of a google map. Because Google didn’t even have an API for the service at the time, this app was just novel enough to earn a bunch of great inbound links from some very well-ranked “tech” bloggers who NEVER would have linked to a real estate site under normal circumstances. [...]
[...] I first met Pete thanks to an introduction from Paul Rademacher before Trulia had launched (and they were going by the name RealWide!). Thanks to my experiment with gHomes, I had started up a conversation with Paul and he knew I was looking to get out of transportation engineering and into the wild world of online real estate. [...]
[...] gHomes — Seattle Area MLS on Google Maps Sphere: Related Content [...]