I've been shopping for a house for just over 3 years. The Seattle market is super competitive. Why so long? That is a discussion for another day. :)
On to the main topic... In those 3 years, I've used a variety of sites and methods to track homes that I've found interesting... the realtor would send me a page of links or I would do the same... but VE's scratch pad and collection feature changed the way things were done.
Sites such as
Redfin.com and
JohnLScott.com have recently integrated their systems with VirtualEarth. That's some cool stuff. There is no doubt in my mind that house shopping has been seriously elevated in the time that I've been in the market.
Ok.... so you've heard me
rave about VE in the past. Here's another cheer. This post was inspired by a
post from the VE team, which I read just a few minutes ago, basically describing my scenario!
I saved a collection that I can share with friends and family. It's super easy to add a photo of the house, a link to the house info, and my own comments. Zoom in, zoom out, use Bird's Eye to basically get a 360 view of the property.
Best of all, phone conversations take on a new dimension when you can easily add/delete homes and have those changes immediately seen.
This stuff rocks.
Although I am a huge fan, there are a few recommendations I would like to suggest...
- Undelete - there have been a couple times that I've accidentally deleted the wrong pushpin.
- Lock/unlock - it would be nice to be able to lock a collection; thus preventing changes from being saved.
- Improved address to photo mapping. There are times the system places a pushpin in the wrong place (i.e. off by a half-block or more).
Cool stuff, nonetheless.