Google Maps gains real estate search

Stephen Withers
Monday, 06 July 2009 11:57

Your IT - Home IT

Google has added real estate search to Google Maps. Properties for sale or rent can be superimposed on the company's street maps.

According to Nielsen research cited by Google, 87 percent of Australian home buyers use the internet for research. It seems likely that a significant proportion already use Google Maps and Street View, and the ability to add properties to the maps can only make them more useful.

Listings are sourced from sites such as homehound.com.au and myhome.com.au, as well as estate agent chains including First National, LJ Hooker and McGrath.

Househunters can enter a suburb of interest, and then either click on a 'thumbtack' on the resulting map to get details of the corresponding property, or on a listing in the left-hand column to quickly reveal the property's location on the map.

The range of properties can be controlled by entering a price range, type (eg detached), floor area range, and number of bedrooms, bathrooms and parking spaces.

The system seems to have a few kinks left to be worked out. For example, one of the properties shown on a Palm Beach NSW map turned out to be in Palm Beach Queensland.

"Given the importance of location to a home search, we've made it easy for home buyers and renters to see listings that match their criteria on Google Maps even as they pan and zoom the map to different areas," said Andrew Foster, product manager, Google.

"We know that many Australian home buyers are already using Google Maps in their house-hunting, and by adding real estate listings to the map we're putting everything together for them in one place."

Estate agents have welcomed the development.

“The real estate profession, perhaps more than many others, has become strongly focused around IT and the use of websites over the last decade," said Rob Druitt, president of the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia.

"The evolution of the internet has transformed the sector, such that buyers, sellers and renters are much better informed and have easy and quick access to images and contacts. Indeed, this is now the high expectation with property consumers," he added.

Google claims "hundreds of thousands of up-to-date sale and rental listings" can be searched from Google Maps.