Back in November the Google Vans were seen running around some of our capital cities photographing the streets to provide a 360 degree panoramic view right down at the street level. Today Google Street View goes live in Australia but what everyone assumed at the time was that like the US, we would only have the large capital cities on Street View. Newspapers are reporting that Google’s goal is to map virtually all streets in Australia including smaller and possibly even major highways.
For the next week we will be no doubt be bombarded with comments in the media about privacy concerns the same as when Google Maps was initially released but it will not take long to die down.
Personally I have found that up till now mapping has not been as a bigger impact with real estate online as thought it was going to be but Street View has the potential to become huge. Street View will allow buyers to really narrow down the field when looking for homes when used on top of the substantial number of internal photos already on most listings.
What a fantastic tool for our industry and there are dozens of way an agent can use this. The race will be on between portals and networks to integrate this feature into their websites.
Editor Note: Domain had this up and running yesterday
13 Comments
SSSR
Is there an app plug in for this out yet?
Glenn Batten
I actually wrote and submitted the article yesterday morning and within hours I had received an email from Domain advising they have integrated Street View into their portal.
I have not had a chance to see how it works and if they have integrated into the page or are just linking to a page but it would appear that there might be an api for all webdesigners to use.
nathan
I dont think they have got it running at all !!!
For Example
Unless im looking in the wrong spot ??
They’ve only done an intro page…
Marcus Sintome
When we knew about Google Street View we spent some time yesterday integrating into our own real estate site. It wasn’t too difficult.
We’ve placed a Street View 3D link which keeps the new view on the page for the property.
http://www.toop.com.au/fulldetails.asp?refid=25CYANNOR0A
(as an example).
It actually works really well and I think that this announcement will indeed be a fantastic resource for the Real Estate Industry.
adam
Now all we need is to make sure agents put addresses in listings on the portals and we will be honky dory 🙂
brett
Nathan – I clicked on your link and it worked perfectly. Prehaps google maps is having teething issues? I do note that when I try to ‘walk’ down the street in the street view it often alerts me that too many people are using it to load the next frame.
I think it’s brilliant. When Google starts selling real estate it will get very interesting!
Glenn Batten
Nathan,
Domain definitely do have it running. It is an extra button to the top of the map which are at the bottom of the page. A bit inconspicuous. It is also at the top off the popout photo page when you look at the larger photos.
Marcus
Great job… and fast implementation. Love to hear any feedback you get from buyers in the first few weeks.
Just one question, from a marketing perspective I could think of times that showing the street view is not going to be beneficial. Are you turning it on by default on all properties or are you manually checking each property to ensure the street view is not detrimental? Obviously at a portal level they will just apply it to everything with an address.
Kitchen Designer
Gee, I don’t know… What can be really gained from this? My streetview image is outdated already. Will Google be forever driving around taking new images and continuously updating?
SSSR
Marcus, thanks for the heads up. That is the first time I have had a chance to play with Google Street View. How cool is it! Well done to Domain who have moved quickly to implement this. It is well worth the effort.
Glenn Batten
RPData invested a fortune in taking front shots of property to integrate into their database. In fact it was one of their only real point of differences over more modern competition. Overnight, the value of that asset virtually got written off. Ouch!
Thanks to Google Street View, PDSLive (www.pdslive.com.au) already has a solution out of development and in final testing within 24 hours of release and is expected to go live to QLD and NSW clients in a day or two.
Glenn Batten
A few days on and the predictable privacy issues are still raging in the newspapers. This happened with Google Maps and Google Earth and both are now well and truly accepted. In fact unlike Google Street View, both Earth and Maps show you a view that you cant see easily by yourself without growing a set of wings.
PDSLive http://www.pdslive.com.au just rolled out to all clients Google Street View into their solution this afternoon as well.
Has anybody heard anything about REA’s implementation of Street View ?
Some API details for anyone looking for it are at http://googlemapsapi.blogspot.com/2008/03/street-view-in-api-or-how-i-spent-my.html
snoop
So what value does it really add?
Seems like a lot of Hype with not much real use?
PDSlive is a b2b play?
Why would an agent use it?
Seems more consumer focused?
Glenn Batten
Snoop,
I guess you have to be a real estate agent to understand all the uses and there are many, both internally and for solutions to the public.. One thing that I had not expected to be such a big deal was buyers previewing houses on Google Street before they come to an open house. We have had a number of buyers advise they checked the home and street out before coming to the open house.
As to PDS.. again you have to be an agent. It is a property agent database for real estate agents just like RPData and each have their own consumer versions with http://www.myrp.com.au and http://www.streetsales.com.au.
Years ago RPData went and photographed the front of every property. It would have cost them a fortune at the time but it gave them a point of difference over new players entering the market. Real Estate agents like those front photos for many reasons. My point is that one advantage they had disappeared overnight when PDS entered into a relatively cheap enterprise agreement for Google Street Sales which is more up to date and far more advanced than RPData’s static front property photos.