We’re pleased to announce PropertyMaps.com has been acquired!!  Here’s a quick excerpt from the press release:

Austin entrepreneur Jeff Chambers, former U.S. product director for HomeAway, Inc., has acquired PropertyMaps.com, a leading residential real estate search engine. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Real estate has been one of the hardest hit sectors during the recent slow down in the US economy.  However, that pressure created a unique opportunity for Chambers to redefine the structure of a successful real estate company to best serve customers in an evolving marketplace.

“Despite the struggles in residential real estate over the last two years, we believe PropertyMaps.com’s superior technology platform gives us the ability to enter into the market and compete on the national stage.  We will leverage our technical expertise to connect consumers, agents and advertisers like never before, and we’ll do it in a more capital efficient way through strategic partnerships and acquisitions,” says Chambers, chief executive officer of PropertyMaps.com.

You can read the full release here:  http://bit.ly/neXat

Thanks to all of our customers, broker partners and agents – Jeff has a ton of experience and will undoubtedly apply the knowledge he gained from running the US products for vacation rental leader HomeAway.com.  He will take good care of you and we look forward to this business growing bigger, faster and stronger in the years ahead.

– The PropertyMaps.com Team

When purchasing, remodeling or foreclosing an older home, there are a many things to consider in the real estate industry. Used in homes and buildings prior to 1980, asbestos exposure can cause significant health concerns. Due to its resistance to heat and electrical conductivity, asbestos was used throughout the world as prominent a form of insulation and piping. Homebuyers and real-estates men should be aware that asbestos exposure can cause significant health concerns.

Exposure to asbestos has produced severe lung ailments, such as mesothelioma. Research has indicated it can take anywhere from 20 to 50 years for mesothelioma to develop. This makes mesthelioma cancer prognosis a difficult task. Many factors impact how a person can react to the disease. These include latency period, cigarette smoking and age of diagnosis.

madonna true blue mp3 Removal of asbestos in public facilities, workplaces and homes must be performed by licensed abatement contractors as long as the National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) are not violated. The United Nations Environmental Program states that the use of recycled building materials such as cotton fiber insulation can reduce energy use by 25 to 35 percent.

Once the removal is complete, green insulation options should be given serious consideration, such as: Cellulose, Cotton Fiber and Lcynene. A water based spray polyurethane foam, Lcynene features no toxic components. Statistics show that the Lcynene foam, for example, can cut energy costs by about 35 percent annually, according to studies done by manufacturers. Although needed to be removed by professionals, it is worth price for a healthier, positive lifestyle

The Research and Development (RAND) organization has helped raise awareness and education for those affected and those seeking to avoid themselves the problem. With the help of think tanks such as RAND and other organizations, removal in work places and public facilities is on the rise. These asbestos alternatives allow for a clean, healthy home, free of health damaging materials.

There is an interesting debate going on over at TechCrunch regarding a WAV Group study on the accuracy of online real estate listings. Glenn Kelman of Redfin even departs some wisdom in the comments.

I don’t intend to fan any flames with this post, but just wanted to point out the obvious. The MLS aggregators seem to have much better accuracy than the MLS circumventors. Of course, these terms are somewhat relative, but you can figure out who’s who in the chart below.

You can also see which of the MLS’ have a tighter lock on their data. For the most part, these areas are represented by distinct boards and the hoops you have to jump through to acquire the data is reflected quite well.

Even though Roost commissioned the study, it’s obvious that working with the MLS has greater benefits than working against the MLS. This is the same stance we have at PropertyMaps.

Accuracy of Online Real Estate Listings

A couple small things that don’t warrant a post on their own so I’m going to lump them together into this one:

Hot Headlines
We’ve brought these back to the front page after being taken over by the overwhelming resistance to their removal.

We’re a 6!
Google toolbar page rank was updated this past weekend and our front page has been promoted to a 6. I know the ranking is logarithmic, but I’ve heard the jump from 5 to 6 is one of the harder steps.

Internet Explorer 6
We are slowly phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6. The site works (but may not look the best) in IE6 right now, but we will cut support when we roll out some upcoming changes. Once this happens, we’ll notify IE6 users of the incompatibility.

That’s it for now. More announcements and an article or two are coming up shortly…

We’ve already started talking about our property counts in various press releases (1.3 million), but have never touched on the subject of how many images we have for those properties. As of this writing, we have over 8.5 million unique images. I think this is pretty significant as this is one of the most important criteria for real estate searches on the Internet. According to the National Association of Realtors®:

A study by REALTOR.com found that a home listing with six photos got 300 percent more views than a property with one or no photos, says REALTOR.com President and CEO Allan Dalton.

On average, we have at least 6 images per listing on ProperyMaps.com and these images are updated daily. No wonder we fried the processor/motherboard on one of our servers last week.

Over 8.5 Million Unique Images

We’ve added a new tool the the PropertyMaps.com Broker CRM (called Tool Box) – driving directions for MLS properties. If you are a broker with us, you will see a new link on the left nav called “MLS Mapping Directions”, click on this to enter your starting point and the list of properties you want to make a route for. Clicking “Map Route” will produce directions with each MLS listed as a waypoint along you route. Unfortunately, the Google Maps API does not allow us to do the cool polyline dragging to change up the route – hopefully this will be rolled out soon. If you are a broker and your area has not already been taken (or even if it has), you can sign up with us on our Broker Sign Up page.

Driving Direction For PropertyMaps’ Brokers

As the online real estate space is heating up, there have been quite a few mashup-type sites popping up. We are different from the rest in a major way, which the below graphic summarizes nicely. The basic idea is that if you are researching something as important as a property purchase, you want the most comprehensive information available to make that decision. We strongly believe in working with the MLS’s, not circumventing them, allowing us to provide our users the largest number of listings with the most information (not only breadth, but depth). If you want more information, please take a look at Why PropertyMaps.com is #1.

The PropertyMaps Difference.

We are beginning to make rapid progress on the site as the core infrastructure is nearing completion. You can see from the image below or at this map link all the states/boards that are in the process of having their data integrated.

Properties are on their way.
We have updated the main website to show all the data integration that is pending.