I’ve been reading about Zillow’s new smart search, and the discussions that are springing up about map based real estate navigation, and think, what Zillow really needs is a Google My Maps type application.

Maybe it already exists, but what I would find most useful is a map application where you could draw a boundary manually to search from. Check out this map

It’s a small development of Mid-Century Modern homes that are completely unique from everything else around them. City, Zip Code, and even neighborhood searches don’t know how to filter these homes. Someone who would want to buy here might not consider another home in the area for miles.

I think many people look for homes based on a particular block, or on one side of the tracks, or along a street with a view. A national aggregator like Zillow will struggle to define a neighborhood in this manner. I don’t think Move.com even wants to. The more homes they can show the better right? Wrong. Instead of dumping a pile of data onto the user, why not let them filter out what they know they don’t want?

On top of that, how useful would it be for an RE agent to be able to draw a boundary around their prospect farm, and set up an RSS feed of every new bit of data that pertains to these houses?

Real estate is more local than any national company is ever going to know how to parse. It seems to me that it would make more sense to give the reader the ability to parse it for themselves.