Estately Blog » ShackPrices http://blog.estately.com A blog of growth, strategy, development and design Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:20:11 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Address and Listing number search http://blog.estately.com/2007/02/address-and-listing-number-search/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=address-and-listing-number-search http://blog.estately.com/2007/02/address-and-listing-number-search/#comments Thu, 08 Feb 2007 20:56:55 +0000 Galen http://blog.shackprices.com/2007/02/08/address-and-listing-number-search/ 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!

]]> http://blog.estately.com/2007/02/address-and-listing-number-search/feed/ 0 What have we been up to? http://blog.estately.com/2006/12/what-have-we-been-up-to/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-have-we-been-up-to http://blog.estately.com/2006/12/what-have-we-been-up-to/#comments Sat, 30 Dec 2006 01:39:58 +0000 Galen http://blog.shackprices.com/2006/12/29/what-have-we-been-up-to/ I’d like to thank everyone who has given us such excellent feedback over the nearly two weeks since we launched. We thought you’d be pretty busy with Christmas and whatnot, so we saved the good post-launch news until life slowed down a little.

So what’s new? In the time since we launched, we’ve been covered all over the web, including such places as:

The Robot Coop
Sellsius Blog
3 Oceans Blog
Bloodhound Blog
Entering Startup
Seattle PI and their real estate blog (wow!)
and The Future of Real Estate Marketing

Just because we launched doesn’t mean that we’re done. We’re rolling out features and tweaking the site like crazy right now. What’s happened since we launched? We’ve already forgotten a bunch of the tweaks and changes, but here are a few:

  • Better photo information – if we’re expecting image, we let you know and if there aren’t any, we let you know about that too. (Thanks for pointing this out Ardell!)
  • Bigger images in the bubbles – the old images were just too small (thanks anonymous!)
  • Safe button

    Save Shacks more easily – there’s a star in the upper right hand corner of the photo. Click it to save, click it again to unsave (thanks for asking us to make it clearer, anonymous!). You can review all your saved properties under the My ShackPrices tab.

Our favorite note from a user so far is:

What I like about your website is that it is straight forward while having many features; this makes it easy for me to move around the site to find my shacks.

Wow! Such praise AND the volunteered use of the word shack.

Is there something missing in your shack search? Send us your questions, comments or insights in the comments or via our feedback form.

PS: While the tweaks make looking for shacks an even better experience, you, dear user, should look forward to some bigger experience-improving features in the coming few weeks. Stay tuned…

]]> http://blog.estately.com/2006/12/what-have-we-been-up-to/feed/ 1 Start searching on ShackPrices.com http://blog.estately.com/2006/12/start-searching-on-shackpricescom/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=start-searching-on-shackpricescom http://blog.estately.com/2006/12/start-searching-on-shackpricescom/#comments Wed, 13 Dec 2006 15:00:55 +0000 Galen http://blog.shackprices.com/2006/12/13/start-searching-on-shackpricescom/ After getting great feedback from our beta testers, improving the site and squashing bugs, we’re opening our doors to let the public start searching for homes on our map-based real estate search site, ShackPrices.com.

What is ShackPrices?

map sample

ShackPrices.com is a snappy Google maps-based real estate search site that makes finding a home better by augmenting each real estate listing with data about what is nearby, including the distances to nearby landmarks, nearby schools and nearby bus stops. ShackPrices also helps home buyers learn about cities and neighborhoods through reviews, statistics and photos. Home buyers can search for shacks (shabby to chic, of course) across all of Western Washington on ShackPrices.com.

What makes ShackPrices.com different?

tabs

You’ll spot some obvious things that differentiate ShackPrices.com right off the bat, including information about what is nearby every listing (check out the surroundings near this Fremont listing) and Suggested Shacks, which predicts houses home buyers might be interested in if they like any of the 20,000+ houses for sale on ShackPrices.com.Once you get past the obvious differences, the subtle features that set ShackPrices apart will become more apparent including:

ShackPrices is still in its infancy, so expect more handy features in the coming year and please let us know how we can improve your experience.

-The Shack Team

]]> http://blog.estately.com/2006/12/start-searching-on-shackpricescom/feed/ 19 Dusting off the blog http://blog.estately.com/2006/12/dusting-off-the-blog/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dusting-off-the-blog http://blog.estately.com/2006/12/dusting-off-the-blog/#comments Tue, 12 Dec 2006 23:22:38 +0000 Galen http://blog.shackprices.com/2006/12/12/dusting-off-the-blog/ Since our last post in June, you may have been asking yourself “has ShackPrices dropped off the face of the earth?” But you would be asking the wrong question. The right question is “what kind of awesome real estate search site has the ShackPrices team been working on?” Our totally unbiased answer to that question: pretty awesome.

Currently a bunch of home buyers are poking and prodding the site while they feverishly search for the perfect shack (shabby to chic, of course). We’re pretty satisfied with what we’re hearing from them, so look forward to a public site soon, John Q. Public. Then you, dear reader, will get to start searching for homes (ahem, shacks) on our site. What will you find? Hopefully an intuitive interface, neat things you never knew about homes (more on this soon), and lots of details about homes.

-The Shack Team

]]> http://blog.estately.com/2006/12/dusting-off-the-blog/feed/ 0 “Link to this page” has arrived http://blog.estately.com/2006/01/link-to-this-page-has-arrived/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=link-to-this-page-has-arrived http://blog.estately.com/2006/01/link-to-this-page-has-arrived/#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2006 20:07:18 +0000 Galen http://www.shackprices.com/blog/2006/01/09/link-to-this-page-has-arrived/ Is your neighbor’s house for sale and you want to know what it sells for? Of course, but, if you’re like me, you don’t really want to come to our site, find the place, zoom in, and change the number of bedrooms etc. just to find that it hasn’t completely closed yet. Enter the “link to this page” button.
If you want to send a page to your buddy or bookmark a view for future use, click on “link to this page” in the lower right (or just copy and paste it into an email). Then you can copy the link from the address bar.

]]> http://blog.estately.com/2006/01/link-to-this-page-has-arrived/feed/ 2 What’s news: we got a blog! http://blog.estately.com/2005/12/whats-news-we-got-a-blog/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=whats-news-we-got-a-blog http://blog.estately.com/2005/12/whats-news-we-got-a-blog/#comments Fri, 30 Dec 2005 01:35:30 +0000 Galen http://www.shackprices.com/blog/2005/12/29/whats-news-we-got-a-blog/ We’ve been actively updating the site since the major overhaul. You might notice that searches are moving much faster today and that addresses are properly formated – yes, very impressive. I’ve been guest blogging over at RainCityGuide.

So, here’s the blog! We’ll try to post frequent updates to let you know what we’re doing and what’s changing. And drop us a line if you like the site.
-Galen

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