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.

We’ve added San Diego, also the birthplace of Apple Pascal for those following along (and my birthplace). The San Diego area brings an additional 23,000+ properties into the fold. San Diego County is not only one of the original counties in California, it is the second largest, with a population of 3,098,269. It is also one of the top 10 cities in the country in terms of population. We’re very happy to provide this area to our users.

San Diego Real Estate Now Available on PropertyMaps

Vote for us. NOW!

PropertyMaps was an early proponent of OpenID and became a relying party as soon as feasible. We saw the need for an open, standards-based, single sign-on persona that could be used across the web. There were several competing implementations out there, but each of them seemed to have an agenda. OpenID was different, it was transparent. We dug deeper and liked what we saw so jumped on the bandwagon. Shortly thereafter, Yahoo, Google, and even Microsoft announced their plans to become providers. This solidified our commitment as we realized we could provide over a half-billion potential users with easy registration.

Using JanRain technologies and the example set by Plaxo, we got OpenID up and running in short order. We saw our registrations spike and whenever a large provider came online, we saw additional spikes. When Yahoo opened up we experienced a record number of registrations.

There has been an increased push lately to bring OpenID into the mainstream and to encourage more sites to support the technology. JanRain has been a big part of this push along with the OpenID Content Provider Advisory Committee and the OpenID Foundation. A new product from JanRain, RPX, is an instant OpenID and Data Portability solution to make the setup process even easier for site owners.

JanRain is also providing case studies of successful OpenID implementations. We’re happy to be the focus of the first study published on their site – PropertyMaps OpenID Case Study. We look forward to greater adoption of this technology and will do our part to push it forward.

We are constantly looking at ways to improve the usability of our site. Today, we are excited to release a significant improvement to our search. The location search field now has an auto complete option. As you type a location name into the search field, a list containing locations we currently have properties for will automatically populate. In order to make it easier to find exactly what your looking for capitalization and punctuation is an issue of the past. We have also added a large amount of city aliases to help make it even easier to find your next home. In addition when a state has multiple cities with the same name the county name will be shown in parenthesis.

The Autocomplete feature also supports keyboard shortcuts. As you type and the list populates with suggestions simply arrowing up and down will move the current selection. Hitting return automatically submits the search and gets you on your way even faster!

If there is a location that you think we are missing please Contact Us and we will make every effort to add it.

Remember that if you don’t recall the name of area you can always “Browse for Properties” or look in our “Property Directory“.

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

Last week we quietly rolled out self-serve advertising on PropertyMaps. The new feature is tucked into a corner of the site during our beta phase, but once we work all the kinks out, we’ll start pushing this a little harder. Right now to access the self-serve ads, you will need to log in (create an account first if you don’t have one), then head on over to “My PropertyMaps“. You’ll see the new “Advertise on PropertyMaps” tab on the right (see pic below).

You can set up your ad to display in certain locations on the site and for certain zip codes. You can also decide how long you want your ad to run, how much you want to spend, and when your ad should start. We’ve made the entire sign-up process as automated as possible, but we still have to approve your ad before it goes into the rotation (we don’t really want to be peddling guns or porn).

We think this is a very powerful tool for advertisers as you can fine tune your ad for a micro location (or go big if you want to). If you have any feedback on this new system, leave a comment or post something in the Real Estate Forum.

Self-Serve Advertising

PropertyMaps has been added to the native iPhone application SearchQuest GPS. The SearchQuest GPS application is a suite of location aware applications and PropertyMaps is placed under “Real Estate For Sale”. The full description of the application is:

“Location-Based Utilities and Travel Guide

SearchQuest is a suite of location-based utilities that leverage location, communication and content from the Internet.

Access location-based web apps, share location with acquaintances, worldwide travel guide with Wikipedia, and update location on the web with Yahoo! Fire Eagle.”

Download this handy app today!

SearchQuest GPS

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…