After hearing that Chicago-based brokerage @properties launched a new and enhanced Web site this week, I set out to explore it, engage it, and pass along my initial reactions.
At first glance, the site features a large banner image with an easy-to-spot, basic property search input over it. I typed in “Bronzeville” to test out its neighborhood search function and was asked to register with the site. This is common practice on brokerage Web sites, but I find it annoying and suspect some buyers do too.
I put my peeves aside and registered. Search results revealed large photographs, prices, and bed / bath counts, which can be arranged by price, bed count, bath count, or square footage. If there’s a listing you like, you can save it to a user-defined group, e-mail it to a friend, request a viewing, and elect to receive updates about price changes and availability via e-mail. The interface is straightforward and simple to use.
Even better, you can use a Google Maps interface and a drawing tool to draw in a custom search area. Want to see every listing in four square blocks of Lincoln Park without having to sift through listings for the entire community area? Draw a box around the streets you’re interested in and click “Update Results”. Mapping is a tool that too few broker sites feature (it’s one of the things that we enjoy most about Redfin), so offering that and allowing users to define their search areas is a huge upgrade for @properties.
I had heard that the neighborhood section was pretty specific, so next I clicked “Neighborhoods” in the top navigation bar. Choose Chicago or North Shore, then choose a neighborhood and you are brought to a page with a map of the neighborhood, photos from a new Flickr photostream, and lists and reviews of restaurants, shopping, and home services.
Finally, the front page has a search field for the company’s real estate market reports, which offer neighborhood-specific data like average sales prices, amount of homes for sale, and recent trends. This is still a work in progress — we had no problem accessing the Lincoln Park report, but Bucktown‘s report was blank.
Thank you for the review, Erik. Glad you liked some fo the new features and tools that were specfically developed around the way Chicagoans search for a home. Also thank you for pointing out the glitch with the Bucktown market report. As you mentioned, the site is a work in progress, and we thrive on user feedback. We’ll look into this and let your readers know what’s up.
They lost me with the mandatory registration.
I imagine whatever firm designed the new site told @properties to remove the mandatory registration because new users are in the discovery phase. That is, new users want to experience your site, brand and value prior to passing along their email address. However, some Hippo (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) for @properties directed the design firm to leave it in, “Otherwise we won’t be able to build up a bank of email address for our agents to SPAM.”
Just imagine if amazon.com asked you to register prior to browsing their catalog of products. What if bmwusa.com asked visitors to register for their site before using the configuration tool? Better yet, perhaps redfin.com should adopt this model before users have the chance to discover how useful their real estate listings are.
It would be nice if users could check out the new site and build a positive impression of the @properties brand. Instead, they are left feeling as if @properties wants to capture their information prior to starting any sort of relationship.
Hopefully the forced registration will be removed soon.
Rubloff does not require any registration to use the site and you can search with a map there as well.
@ is a hard seller – mid market. Less sophisticated buyer.
I neither work nor have affiliations with either.
I use B&W’s website – no registration either (though I miss being able to search by street name…).