Where the heck did that “Nearby” tab go under Listing Details? I’ll tell you where: on the details page! All the same information is there: nearby schools, transit, parks, and places; however, you can now view where there nearby places are relative to the home you’re looking at right on the neighborhood overview map! If you’re not really in to green grass, trees, and nature, you can quickly hide parks from the neighborhood map by clicking on the parks tab and unchecking “Show Parks on the Neighborhood Map”. You can, of course, do this with the other three nearby categories. As Rachael Ray of Food Network fame would say, “How cool is that?” Unfortunately, no part of this update is “Yum-o!” (Another Rachael Ray saying. Sorry…)

See it in action on a random home in Seattle, Bellevue or Portland. Yes, Hung Far Low is just 1.8 miles, or a brisk 35 minute walk from that Portland home.

At this rate, maybe next year. It’s in Portland (example). It’s in frickin’ Spokane (also known as Spotucky). But despite the addition of 37 new areas, it isn’t in Seattle.

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)

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”

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.

I have always had a horrible memory, but recently technology has made it even worse. I only remember keywords now and whenever I want to remember something, I search my computer or my gmail (I write myself memory emails). I think a lot of people are like me in this respect. So when I look at one of the 42,643 homes for sale in Washington (or the 3,388 homes for sale in Seattle alone), I only remember the ones with dramatic photos (good or bad).

There is a better way

Add a note to the property. Once you learn more about it, add another. As you go along, you’ll collect a nice inventory of information about the homes in a neighborhood and you’ll (almost) never forget what you know about a house.

Questions you can now answer:

• “Was this the one that could politely be described as a “fixer?” “Yep!”
• “What did we think of this one when we saw it? It says here we liked it, but our agent thought it was priced about $40,000 too high.”

Your notes are searchable

Full text search already let you search pretty much everything you see on the details page for a home - the agent comments, the amenities, and pretty much everything else. Your notes are included in text search too. Take notes with the confidence you can find them again through a quick, dynamic search.

Step 1: Find a house and type a note

Step 2: Add a note. Rinse and repeat if necessary

You don’t have to be logged in to give it a try - just pull up a home and add a note.

‘My ShackPrices’ received a little update earlier this week. Not only has the property list layout been updated for easier perusal, but a few more options have been added to your fingertips, allowing you to view each property on the map, view the property details, as well as what’s nearby!

Additionally, we’ve highlighted (with green) the ability for you to refine your search even more, such as by the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, lot sizes, and more! While this is not a new feature, we’ve just made it a little more apparent that it’s there. Be sure to look for it under the text search.

I was busy dealing with boring paperwork stuff last week, but Doug was cranking out features like a madman. They’ve been coming so quickly that we haven’t been able to let you, our dedicated users, know about them.

On to the feature of the day: your saved properties now show up with a neato little star on the map, which means you don’t have to click on the house to remember if that house is the one that you saved - you can just see it there. We also just added stars alongside the listing summaries down the left side of the map. Click to save, click again to unsave. I really like this feature - it extends our “info at a glance” map marker styling so you can quickly get back to a saved property if you’re looking for it.

Whenever Doug and I show people ShackPrices, they sit down and begin typing their address into the search box, causing us to apologetically explain that, while ShackPrices is powerful, it can only send you to neighborhoods, cities, and zip codes (did you know that you can type a neighborhood name in the search box?).

Today ShackPrices has become a little smarter. You can now search for an address or a listing number and the gerbils in our server will look it up in their tiny gerbil atlases and send you to that address. Virtually and (nearly) instantly! If there’s a house for sale at that address, we’ll let you know, otherwise we show you the homes nearby.

Does it work the way you want it to? Let us know!

We just rolled out another feature update today: we now show math and reading scores for all schools (shown on the nearby page for each house) along with links to super-detailed school information. Grade levels and student population are thrown in (small school proponents rejoice!). Additionally, we tell you each school’s district, so you’ll won’t get stuck buying a house next door to a great school, but sending your kids across the city to a crummy one.

We are showing the school scores with some reservations - there are many great schools with middling scores and many unfortunately less quantifiable factors that could make a school great for you. That said, scores are one of the best measures we have for comparing schools and we feel that the links to detailed information will help you find the right school for you.

Part of the upgrade is a much prettier nearby page - we were never totally happy with the layout of the old page. We think you’ll like the new nearby page (you have to click on them to see the new layout).