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My wife and I are house hunting, have been for months. We're searching over a fairly large area in Virginia with a pretty specific set of wants and needs. We've mostly used Zillow for this, but I'm annoyed with the number of additional steps I need to take to get details I want and collaborate with my wife and realtor.
When I find a property on Zillow that I like, I click the Heart icon so my wife can check it out at her convenience on her computer. That's nice, but she has to be logged in as me to do that. I don't mind that for my wife, but I don't want to give everyone access to my Zillow account. It would be so much better if there was some collaboration feature that let me share my "Favorites" with other people, like our realtor or friends/family who are keeping an eye on our search.
On a related thought, I would be nice if I could make notes about a listing that would be visible by other people I'm sharing with.
When I see a listing that looks interesting, before I click thru to the pictures, I map it. I do this because we don't want a place within earshot of a busy road. It would be terrific if Zillow (or someone) would partner with Google and add a button to the listing that saves me having to copy the address then switch to a different browser tab then paste in the address.
I love that I can filter my listings to only show homes with a certain minimum number of bedrooms, bathrooms, and acreage, but I have another filter I would like added. We are only interested in houses above about 2000 feet elevation. Again, before I even bother looking at pictures I have to copy the address and paste it into a webpage that tells me the elevation. Seems like this would be easy enough to integrate.
So, those things, collaboration, maps, and elevation, would make a Zillow-type site much better for us. Anyone have suggestions or "wants" of their own?
.....it would be nice if I could make notes about a listing that would be visible by other people I'm sharing with.
Since it would cost money to implement a change like that, would you be willing to pay an access fee to Zillow? Currently it is a free service and you get what you pay for. It is a screening tool without question, but some of their information is out of date or sometimes inaccurate. Take it for what it's worth.
As the previous poster pointed out, since Zillow is a free service, they're not about to deploy features that would cost them money unless there's an offsetting revenue stream.
Have you talked about this with your realtor? We have at our fingertips a very good MLS interface with all the same search features zillow has, and a map with satellite (and flood plain) and the ability to share feedback and notes back and forth with our clients. See if your local MLS has similar features.
We don't have elevation though, that's not stored in the MLS data
Huh... OK! I don't think that would be accurate here... there's a lot that can go in to average temp, air flow patterns being the most important.
Our ocean beaches, at zero elevation, are actually among the coolest places in summer. Local factors matter!
It definitely matters in central and western Virginia. We spent last summer camped in the mountains and the difference when we would drive down into Roanoke or other areas below 1000 feet was dramatic.
We sold our Florida home last summer. We loved Florida for decades, but we're ready for change.
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