Did you see it yet? In 5 selected cities you can now see a street view, spin around, zoom in and out, watch your neighbor taking out the trash, look through people’s windows and even wander through the streets by clicking on the arrows. Amazon A9 had a similar feature, but the interface was lacking (only side shots) and clunky (no dragging the little dude around to see another area).

This was announced at the same time as Google’s real estate mashup yesterday. Obviously we’ll add this to ShackPrices the moment we’re allowed to use it. What great context it could bring to real estate search!

We’ve been so busy we forgot to mention our latest update: you can now see only the homes you have saved on the map. Just click more options and you’ll see it there at the bottom. This was one of our most requested features and we’re glad to get it out for everyone to use.

If you save homes for a variety or reasons like I do, you can filter your saved properties using the normal search criteria. My saved properties could be broken into two groups: “interesting million dollar plus homes in my area (and how much will they sell for?)” and “homes I can possibly afford in my area (and how quickly will they sell?)”.

(You can always subscribe to get emails or an rss feed notifying you when your saved properties change in price, status or sell).

Seattle is a middle-of-the-road city when it comes to mass transit: we have a good bus system, but not much in the way of rail (our first line is coming in the next couple of years). Middle of the road on transit, but definitely on the slow-to-stopped end of car transit, especially if you commute across the lake. The crummy driving conditions make our bus system pretty attractive for some folks.

Recently we’ve had a couple of users tell us they don’t just want to see what bus stops are near each home - they want to live near a specific bus line. We debated the clutter it would add to our search options (not another option unless it’s going to be used!) a little, but decided it would be a fun project, so we cooked up transit search on Friday. Now you can type in the bus routes you would like to live near, select how far from the stops you would like to be, and presto!, only homes near those stops are shown.

Living near mass transit is probably good for property values. And it seems like an especially good idea in the wake of the San Francisco freeway melt down (and the chance it could happen in Seattle). And the impending removal of or the endless construction on the viaduct.

We can’t guarantee that buses will stop for you or that they’ll be on time (but they are faster since the downtown bus tunnel was closed).

Read more about Seattle transit from the transit junkies at the Seattle Transit blog and from the Bus Chick.
(You can search for homes near metro and Sound Transit bus stops and Sound Transit light rail. Other lines not included at this time.)

We forgot to post this video tour of ShackPrices when it came out. It’s missing some of our newest features (saved homes from the listings page and text search for instance), but it’s a great introduction to the site. It’s from Screeniac, an all screencast review site (what an interesting concept!).