Green Real Estate
OK, chances are you’re not a member of the aviation community, and that’s OK! Neither am I. Just add -airstrip to your text search to subtract all properties that have an airstrip from your search!
Maybe you’re a green-minded individual that doesn’t like burning jet fuel in our beautiful Northwest atmosphere. Estately can help you out, too. If you’re looking for a home that’s LEED certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) as being green, simply do a Text Search for “LEED”. If you’re a fan of that bright glowing ball of fire in the sky that most of us call “sun,” try doing a text search for “solar” to aid in your search for either solar-equipped or solar-ready homes.
As you can see, our Text Search can help you zero-in on that home you’re looking for, no matter how specific your needs are (ever dreamed of having a dumbwaiter? Neither have I…).
Have any cool or interesting Text Searches that you use? Share ‘em with us!
Join the discussion »It’s All About the Extras
Sometimes, it’s not about the choice of schools nearby, or how close major lines of mass transit are (a bit more on that early next week), and sometimes it’s not even about being a couple blocks away from a good coffee shop (although, admittedly, sometimes it really is about that).
No, sometimes it’s all about the extras (Google agrees with me a half million times). Sometimes, it’s about owning a home with an airstrip! That’s right, you read correctly. An airstrip. At the time of posting, Estately has 50 properties for sale throughout Washington and Oregon that have an airstrip, starting at a mere $160k (you can perform this search yourself by doing a Text Search for “airstrip”). Now you, too, can own a home with airstrip, without paying that airstrip premium. The money you save can easily go toward filling up the ol’ Cessna.
Estately can help you find some real gems. You just have to look.
Join the discussion »- January 31st, 2008
- by Galen
- Features, Interface Design
Dude, New S— Has Come to Light
Estately.com’s home page has grown up from the old blue box and random text. Today the front page gives you a look at the newest properties being added to Estately, describes Estately Agent Match (and actually features it), and still has that versatile search box that accepts addresses, MLS numbers, neighborhoods, zip codes, and cities.
Like Google, Doug and I created the original front page as an afterthought – we knew we needed a search box, but we weren’t much for designing something attractive or informative. We could however design something functional: a box with a button. All of our design-related efforts went into the map layout, which was much more about user-interface than about design. And so it was until this morning, when Shaun’s new design went live (did I mention we have a new front-end / designer dude dedicated to making Estately more usable?).
Also! It’s always been there, but now you can actually tell how easy it is to sort properties by price, square footage, bedrooms, or the number of days the property has been on, ahem, Estately. Just click the headers in the results list.
More changes! The photo browser still has nice big photos, but we’ve also added nice big arrows for navigating through the images. Nice big click areas are still there for clumsy clickers like myself.
(that’s sorting by days, in case you wondered)
We still have neighborhood outlines, the capacity to search by neighborhood, zip code or city, tons of information about local schools and parks, and suggested and comparable properties for all 40,000+ homes for sale on Estately.
(in case you didn’t catch the reference, see 2:20 into this clip)
Join the discussion »- January 4th, 2008
- by Galen
- Features, Interface Design
Notes in depth: searching and tagging
We didn’t get all web 3.0 on you and add tags and notes and ratings and widgets to every property, but for the folksonomy lovers out there, you can get all the benefits of tagging without the buzzwords or user interface clutter.
Tagging Step 1: Write a note with your tag (“keeper“)
Tagging Step 2: Use the same keyword in other notes
Tagging Step 3: Search for the keyword (this is the useful part)
Tagging Step 4: Peruse your list of “keepers”
Join the discussion »- December 28th, 2007
- by Galen
- Features, Interface Design
Notes: design decisions
We worked hard to make Estately exceedingly easy to jump into and start searching for homes, yet also extremely powerful. This means we limited the myriad of search options we could have added, combined other options, and made the options that only 0.1% of the users in this world “absolutely need” accessible via the text search box. Our goal is to get people to searching and refining in seconds. When we recently added notes, we made some design choices to keep this ease of use.
Make it easy to add a note. And another.
No links, no separate pages. Just click in a box at the bottom of the page, write a note, and post. If you want to add another note, do it again.
Type and add – pure and simple
Make notes accessible
New, unregistered users and old logged in users alike can add notes – we skipped the forced login screens. People who stumble on the site can write as many notes as they want. Of course, we don’t want people to accidentally abandon their notes and lose them to the ether, so we encourage them to sign up or log in. Notes are permanently saved when people log in.
The log in warning appears when you create a note
Make notes easy to search
Don’t add more clutter to the interface – we let you search your notes through the text search interface that a lot of people are using already.
Join the discussion »