San Francisco — Hoping to ride the rising waves in the real estate listings arena, Google Inc. has introduced a new real estate search feature that will empower users of its product in Australia and New Zealand search for property listings on the Internet giant’s mapping service. This new feature will provide up-to-date listings of properties put up for sale or rent in the market culled from inputs from Google’s real estate industry partners.
The Mountain View, Calif., company’s new tool will empower Australian and New Zealand real-estate agents and publishers to stock up their property listings into Google’s database, enabling buyers and renters to link directly to property listings displayed on the Internet giant’s maps.
The service, basically free detailed listing with a marker on a map, giving users a sense of the distribution of the properties for sale or rent in any specific area. That means searchers could quickly find available properties that are close to, for example, a specific school.
A search sample below for “seattle real estate,” for example, still features listings of real estate agents and brokers on a map.
Users from both Australia and New Zealand can now search using the Google search box within Google Maps. Clicking on the marker will show detailed information about the property, that includes the website of the property agents and contact details. In addition, users can search for properties nearby specific locations or areas.
Users can further refine their search based on various criteria such as by bedrooms and baths, price range, square footage and foreclosures. Listings appear much the same way business listings do: click on a red icon for more information about a home, get directions, save the listing to My Maps, or send the data to someone else via email, phone, car or GPS.
The results are culled in from real estate brokerages and agents, which can upload their listings onto Google Base. Listings also come from databases curated by The Real Estate Book and Homes & Land.
This new feature was unveiled as Google Australia’s way of responding to users’ increasing use of the Internet when searching for properties for sale or rent.
Listings are collected from sites such as homehound.com.au and myhome.com.au, as well as estate agent chains including First National, LJ Hooker and McGrath.
“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.
Real-estate listings on Google Maps had already been available in the U.S., but the service mapped only the top 10 listings. The company said Monday it has also upgraded its U.S. service so that all listings were graphically represented on its maps.
More details of the new feature are explained in the video below: