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Giving the Presidents What They Want: DC Real Estate

Today we are celebrating a 15% expansion in our geographic breadth: the greater Washington DC area. After waiting for over 1 million photos to download, today we are announcing that we now have over half a million homes listed for sale on Estately. And we are welcoming Washington, DC and Baltimore. Having spent some time there, we will also give a shout-out to beautiful Annapolis and having not spent any time there, we will note that you can now search for homes for sale near Murderland Alley – a street made famous in The Wire.

Whether you are searching for a $39+ million manse (the most expensive home in the greater DC area) or a home in Baltimore (we are serious when we say greater DC area), where the average listing price is $150,000, you browse from any of our new 70,000+ listings with the flick of a mouse or the zoom of a map. I always like using text search to show all the waterfront homes for sale in a new area.

Each listing includes all of our trademark information: local schools with school scores, mass transit information for the Metrorail (Example: homes on the Red Line), past sale prices, past listing prices and much, much more.

With this release, we are also rolling out a host of other improvements:

Google Maps Balloon

We’ve “fixed” the google maps balloon. It used to move the map when you clicked on a home near top of the screen – it always opens north (it still does this on Google maps). It got very annoying when you had to pan back to your search area dozens of times. Now: the balloon is smart – it goes where there is room. We permit Google to integrate this improved (and prettier) user interface improvement into Google Maps.

Before:

Old Google Maps Balloon

After:

New Estately bubble-1

Speed

Every page on Estately now loads at least 50% faster. That’s like the difference between my 1996 Honda Civic (8.4 seconds?) and a Porsche Cayenne.

Before:

Estately - before

After:

Estately Today

Better Navigation

Did you know we cover 6 states? Our home page now makes it easier to navigate straight to those states. Sure, that isn’t really a search improvement per se, but it does make starting a search a one-click experience.

Auto-Suggestions on Search

Also! Our search box is smarter than ever. Start typing in a neighborhood, city, state, or zip code – or even an address or listing number of a home that is for sale – and our box will suggest places and homes that match. Now you don’t have to know how to spell Skokie, Illinois or Dunwoody, Georgia.

Before:

Done Woody

After:
Dunwoody Georgia
And Finally…

Price Drop Search

Once you’re there, check out all the price drops from the last day, two days, week, or even longer with our price drop search. There are a lot of them – even in the Long Beach California (aka, the LBC) (or try: the the LBNY or the one price drop in the LBW. The LBI (that’s Indiana!?!) has had no price drops in the last week. Snoop, do not limit your search to the LBC! With our help, broaden your horizons to the LBOthers!

We’re HIRING!

Help us keep rolling out real estate search goodness by referring your fantastic designer friend. See our ad here and send it on!

  • http://savan.posterous.com/ Savan

    Cool! Love the focus on speed. But your car “after” picture is a Lotus, not a Porsche Cayenne :-)

  • http://blog.sentientmonkey.com Scott Windsor

    Great job! I really like the new autocomplete & google maps pop-up. It’s awesome to see the performance improvements, too – keep it up.

  • http://www.shackprices.com/ Galen

    Savan, my bad! But! I believe a Lotus is also 4.4 0-60. So either way, it’s still twice as fast as my Honda.

  • http://www.realcentralva.com Jim Duncan

    Galen –

    Congratulations on the move to Virginia. The choices for great real estate search continue to get better.

    Thanks for help to lead the way.

  • Nitpicker

    “Geographic breadth” sounds one-dimensional. Is this measured along some sort of transect line?

  • http://www.shackprices.com/ Galen

    Nitpicker, if you pick the right dimension – probably 110 degrees from true north – we extended the area previously bounded by Seattle, New York and San Diego. Perhaps next time we will use a better word to describe it though.

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    I really love all the updates and added features, especially the google maps modifications.

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    That's a lot of great improvements, well done guys. If only upgrading my car was that easy! ;-)

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    nice story

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    Everybody likes speed.Why should they be exceptional?
    I think the addition of new map is witty.

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  • http://k2spice.blogspot.com/ Jason

    I couldn't even image how long it would take to update over a million photos.

  • shaneadvance

    God job on this!

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    I like the google map pop up…

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    Congrats! Keep up the great work. It's nice to see how fast this place is growing!

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    Very nice! How many properties are listed that are near the water/river?

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    Wow, that's quite an accomplishment. Good work guys!!

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    I also don't think the upcoming vote on status makes sense using the two proposed questions: do you want to change or leave things as they are? The options need to be clearly defined beforehand.

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    The google map updates are a good enhancement. I think it's cool.

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    This is great… seems all are organized.

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    maps are great

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    So pleased to hear about all the cool updates. Good stuff! :)

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    It is great that everything is loading at least 50% faster and I am happy with the Google map enhancements. Thanks!

  • Anonymous

    Brilliant articles!new features are they have included are really an brilliant one like auto complete & google maps….