One must be impressed by the pace in which realestate.com.au moves when a threat (minor or not) rears its head.
In this case it is mapping.
Realestate.com.au have now upgraded their mapping system to be included in search results and I must say whilst it is not perfect, it is pretty darn good.
One thing I can say is that Domain.com.au (whilst the first of the majors to do this) must now continue to develop their mapping solution.
Realestate.com.au‘s solution includes all of the properties from your search, so if you searched a wide area it includes all o the listings from the one pop up. This is the first time I have seen anyone do this and it is impressive.
Domain have included Sold listings on a map and this too is a great feature and one that may upset realestate.com.au‘s plans to sell this information to consumers.
The only problems I see with recent sales data is the accuracy of these results as I know many agents just put approximates in their sales results and the fact that I wonder how it is monitored as many vendors do not like this information made public.
Domain‘s information however does not come from their system, but from homepriceguide.com.au and I am sure realestate.com.au will want to do the same but keep it in-house, or purchase one of the many of these types of businesses on the market.
Before the end of the year we will see more portals hit the Australian market including realmap.com.au which is still far ahead of these services offered by the portals – the only thing they cannot match is content and I for on are hoping that agents will embrace their model…