Real Estate Marketing Online Blog: More Clever Real Estate Software Developers Hack Free Mapping Services

In last week Friday's post I asked:

Would a brokerage pay for this service (referencing this mapping service), when a programmer on their tech staff can implement one of these technologies into their current offerings?

I actually planned on answering this question today with a post about these services being necessary for some real estate firms. Service providers such as RealBird can be a cost effective tech solution for brokerages without the staff in place to implement these tech solutions. Hello, I do work for a real estate software company - lol.

Then I read this article today: new service lets consumers map real estate sold prices. The website CostWhat.com, uses Google mapping technology to map properties that recently sold. Again, very clever!

Many real estate web solution providers and listing services use links to services like MapQuest when providing home information. How difficult would it be to integrate Multiple Listing Service Data into search provider mapping technologies such as Google maps? Hmm...

Maybe the answer can be found in one of the links in this Search Engine Roundtable post:

So how do you hack Google Maps?
Well good question, as its not quite a simple as Yahoo Maps for instance. There is an excellent Wiki resource that compiles a lot of the work done by other developers to help share some of the hacks they have developed. You can visit Google Maps Hacking . Another Sourceforge resource is a recent thread on the subject here. Finally there is a Google Group on Map Hacking here as well. Some great places to start.