PropertyMaps Corporate Blog

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We’re back from NAR Orlando and had our best show to date. Our new product line was well received and many new contacts and friends were made. It was an extremely busy time for all, demoing our new products and answering the great questions that were asked. Two engineers were on-site so we had the technical front covered (many great questions from our tech savvy clients).

Our phones are now ringing off the hook as we still have our NAR special - half off - running through the end of this month. It was great seeing everyone, and I look forward to seeing you in San Diego at NAR 2009.

A PropertyMaps member broker proudly displaying his new PropertyMaps shirt.

After months of toiling and many late nights, we are proud to announce our new product line up:

PropertyMaps.com Membership
Join our network, exclusively represent your market, and keep your agents busy with plenty of daily leads. Own a piece of a nationally relevant website and reap the benefits of millions of searchers and cutting-edge technology. Performance-based pricing reduces your front-end marketing and development expenses. Membership includes IDX Mapplets for an unlimited number of agents. Also includes unlimited Sphere accounts, the industry’s best Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Astonishing value, affordable price.

IDX Mapplet for Realtors
Embed the best, fastest, and most affordable interactive map-based IDX/ILD search on all of your websites. Leads are automatically sent to you and also seamlessly integrate into Sphere, our feature-rich Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Fully customizable Mapplet displays parcel boundaries and Google Street Views. Upgradable with community data overlays, heat maps, and demographic information.

Real-Time Web Chat
E-mail is so 90’s. Amplify the effectiveness of your website through real-time communication. Be ready when your customers want to do business. Log in when at your computer to accept chat requests, view who’s on your site, and even proactively contact them to ask if they have questions. Users can be emailed transcripts of their chats, which optionally integrate into our customer relationship management software.

Sphere, Customer Relationship Management for Realtors
Customer relationship management is a comprehensive way to collect, organize, and track many pieces of information about your clients so you can sell and service them better. Conduct email marketing campaigns; manage leads, contacts, opportunities and collaborate across your business. Sphere is the most powerful and sophisticated CRM available specifically designed for the real estate business.

Total Information Awareness (TIA) Community Data Package
Finally, detailed community information for your website without breaking the bank. Keep prospects on your site longer with knowledge that illuminates like no other, derived from hundreds of sources. Demographics, trends, crime, weather and much more. Integrates directly with the IDX Mapplet or can be displayed as charts and graphs. We dynamically update as new data is published, attracting visitors with fresh, interesting and useful content.

MediaStreams, Dynamic Website Applets
MediaStreams are like billboards that enable you to place dynamic scrolling mini-searches anywhere on your websites. Each instance of a stream works separately and can be configured with advanced search criteria. Seamlessly integrates with the IDX Mapplet to power your website with continuously updating content that helps you stand out and capture more leads.

During the expo, we are slashing the super low price in half, so be sure to stop by our booth, 2768, and sign up while you can.

Wow, this will be our third NAR conference.

We’ve been hard at work these past few months developing a new line of products to announce at the show. Can’t give you any details right now, but will write another post tomorrow.

Stop by our booth, number 2768, to learn about our new stuff, get free gear, and learn about OpenID. Also, we are having a half-price special during the expo, more on that tomorrow.

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PropertyMaps was an early proponent of OpenID and became a relying party as soon as feasible. We saw the need for an open, standards-based, single sign-on persona that could be used across the web. There were several competing implementations out there, but each of them seemed to have an agenda. OpenID was different, it was transparent. We dug deeper and liked what we saw so jumped on the bandwagon. Shortly thereafter, Yahoo, Google, and even Microsoft announced their plans to become providers. This solidified our commitment as we realized we could provide over a half-billion potential users with easy registration.

Using JanRain technologies and the example set by Plaxo, we got OpenID up and running in short order. We saw our registrations spike and whenever a large provider came online, we saw additional spikes. When Yahoo opened up we experienced a record number of registrations.

There has been an increased push lately to bring OpenID into the mainstream and to encourage more sites to support the technology. JanRain has been a big part of this push along with the OpenID Content Provider Advisory Committee and the OpenID Foundation. A new product from JanRain, RPX, is an instant OpenID and Data Portability solution to make the setup process even easier for site owners.

JanRain is also providing case studies of successful OpenID implementations. We’re happy to be the focus of the first study published on their site - PropertyMaps OpenID Case Study. We look forward to greater adoption of this technology and will do our part to push it forward.

We are constantly looking at ways to improve the usability of our site. Today, we are excited to release a significant improvement to our search. The location search field now has an auto complete option. As you type a location name into the search field, a list containing locations we currently have properties for will automatically populate. In order to make it easier to find exactly what your looking for capitalization and punctuation is an issue of the past. We have also added a large amount of city aliases to help make it even easier to find your next home. In addition when a state has multiple cities with the same name the county name will be shown in parenthesis.

The Autocomplete feature also supports keyboard shortcuts. As you type and the list populates with suggestions simply arrowing up and down will move the current selection. Hitting return automatically submits the search and gets you on your way even faster!

If there is a location that you think we are missing please Contact Us and we will make every effort to add it.

Remember that if you don’t recall the name of area you can always “Browse for Properties” or look in our “Property Directory“.

There is an interesting debate going on over at TechCrunch regarding a WAV Group study on the accuracy of online real estate listings. Glenn Kelman of Redfin even departs some wisdom in the comments.

I don’t intend to fan any flames with this post, but just wanted to point out the obvious. The MLS aggregators seem to have much better accuracy than the MLS circumventors. Of course, these terms are somewhat relative, but you can figure out who’s who in the chart below.

You can also see which of the MLS’ have a tighter lock on their data. For the most part, these areas are represented by distinct boards and the hoops you have to jump through to acquire the data is reflected quite well.

Even though Roost commissioned the study, it’s obvious that working with the MLS has greater benefits than working against the MLS. This is the same stance we have at PropertyMaps.

Accuracy of Online Real Estate Listings

Last week we quietly rolled out self-serve advertising on PropertyMaps. The new feature is tucked into a corner of the site during our beta phase, but once we work all the kinks out, we’ll start pushing this a little harder. Right now to access the self-serve ads, you will need to log in (create an account first if you don’t have one), then head on over to “My PropertyMaps“. You’ll see the new “Advertise on PropertyMaps” tab on the right (see pic below).

You can set up your ad to display in certain locations on the site and for certain zip codes. You can also decide how long you want your ad to run, how much you want to spend, and when your ad should start. We’ve made the entire sign-up process as automated as possible, but we still have to approve your ad before it goes into the rotation (we don’t really want to be peddling guns or porn).

We think this is a very powerful tool for advertisers as you can fine tune your ad for a micro location (or go big if you want to). If you have any feedback on this new system, leave a comment or post something in the Real Estate Forum.

Self-Serve Advertising

PropertyMaps has been added to the native iPhone application SearchQuest GPS. The SearchQuest GPS application is a suite of location aware applications and PropertyMaps is placed under “Real Estate For Sale”. The full description of the application is:

“Location-Based Utilities and Travel Guide

SearchQuest is a suite of location-based utilities that leverage location, communication and content from the Internet.

Access location-based web apps, share location with acquaintances, worldwide travel guide with Wikipedia, and update location on the web with Yahoo! Fire Eagle.”

Download this handy app today!

SearchQuest GPS