[sociate] Wish List: A real househunting app

Paul Rademacher's  <http://www.paulrademacher.com/housing/> mashup of Google
Maps and Craigslist is elegant and useful, but it's just a start. Excellent
that you can see Craigslist houses for rent in the zone you like, within
certain price ranges, showing pictures and full listings at the flick of a
pinkie. It's a great start.

If you're actually on a househunt, wouldn't it be useful to:

*       Annotate the map, listing

*       The streets and neighborhoods you really like and those you don't
(noted perhaps with your cellphone, while driving)
*       Houses you've seen and liked (nixing all those you don't like)
*       Pertinent details for each place (owner, realtor, square footage,
etc.)
*       Practical walking or biking radii from public transport, schools and
other things you find important
*       (add your favorite wish-list item here)


*       Link your photo stream on  <http://www.flickr.com/> Flickr (or the
videos on  <http://youtube.com/> YouTube) with the houses you liked, so you
can remember which is which

*       Build a nice comparison table, mapping the traits you value most
against the properties

*       Have your friends help you find, judge and pick properties (hello,
social networking sites!)

*       Have this all accessible from your cellphone or WiFi PDA

A few sites do help find school information, comparable sales prices, crime
statistics and other useful information, but I haven't seen the app that
focuses on the househunter's process.

Don't wait for  <http://www.realtor.com/> REALTORs to bring this to us. They
see how powerful the Net is, but somehow, they must think it doesn't serve
them to offer customers this much power. More likely, a few Paul
Rademachers, hacking away in their pyjamas, will eventually put this
together. 


posted by Jerry at
<http://www.sociate.com/blog/archives/2005_11_01_archive.html#11312610102222
4803> 11:11 PM

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