A Worldly Road Test of a New Real-Estate Website
It seems you are considered “worldly” if you visit real-estate blogs now (but you knew that already, it’s why you’re here). That, and perusing www.bbc.co.uk, apparently mark you out as sophisticated and cosmopolitan.
It must be true because it says so in the New York Times.
Along with blogs, the online real-estate world throws up more offerings every day. I decided to road-test one interesting site that was highlighted in the Chronicle’s real-estate section recently.
On first impressions, I like StreetAdvisor.com, described as “the easy way to find out what people REALLY think about the street they live in”. The site’s core content is provided by people who live, have lived, or have visited a particular street.
Because the site is relatively new it isn’t particularly useful at the micro-level yet. For instance, I tapped in my own street as well as a couple of Berkeley streets which have new listings (Channing Way and Arlington Avenue). None produced any reader reports. At the moment if you want to find out about Berkeley streets, the reports are essentially limited to main thoroughfares such as Shattuck, Telegraph and Dwight. But hopefully that will change if the site takes off.
I like the clean presentation and intuitive navigation, as well as the idea of its new “Best Streets (In and Around)…” feature. Because its intentions are good, my verdict is it is worth registering on the site and contributing your 2 cents worth. Then check back in with them in a while and see how they’re doing.
The Chronicle article mentioned several other sites, including NeighborCity.com, MortgageMarvel.com, ReelSeekr.com and ProxioPro.com, the last of which is principally targeted at real estate agents. Have a look at them all though — as we all know, all information is good information.
