« How will flexmls handle your listing? a balancing act for sure - Podcast part two of two. | Home | Wish List: Tickle me, MLS, would make a sweet gift »

Can our son get to a first-class high school from our new home on a city bus with no transfers?

By: Greg Swann, BloodhoundBlog.com
Posted: Thursday, October 11th, 2007, 12:20 pm MST
Category: General Information

Joel Burslem at The Future of Real Estate Marketing has a post today on a new school-reporting feature at Estately.com.

Estately is the most ambitious of the consumer-focused map-based search portals, so it is very worth watching. Actually, it would be a good thing if Estately’s Galen Ward were participating here, as well.

We like to say we’re selling houses, and in our marketing we emphasize the idea of delivering lifestyles. In reality, on the buyer’s side at least, we are delivering the optimal solution to a hierarchy of lifestyle factors. This is an idea Estately understands completely: Not just structures but tons of neighborhood, transportation and now school information.

Technorati Tags: ,

3 Responses to “Can our son get to a first-class high school from our new home on a city bus with no transfers?”

  1. Greg Kilwein Says:
    October 12th, 2007 at 11:33 am

    School ranking can be a touchy issue, but it’s a possibility to acquire the necessary school data from a source like SchoolMatters and add a school radius search feature to the map search module in flexmls Web. If you know the address of a school (or any other address), the map search module currently allows the ability to key in an address and run a radius search from that location.

  2. MichaelWurzer Says:
    October 12th, 2007 at 4:41 pm

    As Greg K. (FBS’s Chief Software Architect) mentions, radius search from a school location is straight-forward. A good question for the MLS to discuss, however, is what information about schools beyond location is useful (and how such data should be presented) and what the best source for such data is. A great example of the problems with school data is the difficulty Barbara Corchran found herself in following a Today Show appearance about there weeks ago where she said a certain school system was bad based on statistics and the school loudly responded that she didn’t know squat and invited her to come see the school. She did and reversed her earlier claim. Sticking to the “facts” is often difficult, because one or two statistics often do not tell the story.

  3. Sheila Strunk Says:
    October 22nd, 2007 at 7:11 pm

    Thanks, Michael - playing games with statistics - or providing information within the MLS- for schools, crime rates, etc., can be a dangerous game because the information is very subjective. What may be a great school for you may not mean the same thing to me. And whose statistics do you use? I can search the web and find different valuations depending on the source. If my clients already know what school they want, great - I can find them properties within a radius of that location. If they want my opinion on the relative quality of the school, I’d rather direct them to the school district and allow them to form their own opinion.

Comments