Map out your home search

Online portals are ensuring greater clarity and focused searches to make your house hunt more effective

While site visits and interacting with the sales team of any residential project remains an essential final step for home seekers, a rising number have begun using the internet for their basic research.

While initially it was a scenario of too much raw data across broad spectrum areas to sift through, recently many online portals have begun to take steps to make home searches more effective.

This is being done by providing maps linked to parameter that are of greater relevance in taking a better informed purchase decision.

Ease in short listing of properties is the most critical factor for home buyers in India.

For those tired of the traditional and the standard way of showing available property listings. Makaan.com had launched the map-based property search for the Indian buyers in September 2013. Following feedback, the portal recently added a few features.

Search parameters

Different home buyers have different concepts in mind for their dream abode. For some, community living is ideal for having good social surroundings while for others, proximity of basic amenities like hospitals, schools, public transport etc. defines the perfect residential location. Keeping in mind the need and requirement of home buyers, Makaan.com has updated the map based search with “New Projects” tab for displaying properties available for buying categorized according to real estate projects.

Holistic overview

Home buyers get a view of all the available projects in a given geographical areas or a city in one step only. The basic information about every project, namely the project name, project image, number of properties available, the starting price of the properties etc is available with one click.

they can check 'locality’ that includes and marks the information (name and location) regarding hospitals, schools, ATMs and malls located around the project.

A ‘commute’ option helps buyers to locate the nearby public transport like railways, bus stands and metro stations. ‘Direction’ allow the buyer to find route to reach the project from any other location in the city. A user can also search for a particular project by entering the name of the project in the search bar available at the top of the page.

Landmark searches

Realtycompass.com also provides a landmark based property search feature, which uses the power of map to help consumers search for real estate projects around a landmark or between two landmarks (between your office and your kids school for example). It looks for real estate projects which are located in the geometric polygon around the landmarks. User can toggle between the map view and list view and can also filter the results on the map based on refine parameters on the left. This helps the consumers who is very specific about the location around which he is looking for the home.

Quality information

Realtycompass.com provides an added benefit for the builders who upload land and update high quality information on their website. These builders will be offered free lifetime leads of new customers as a special privilege.

Keeping in mind the importance of this information for the home buyers, Realtycompass.com would incentivize the builders related to the number units available, project approvals, latest construction pictures, floor plans, project location, co-ordinates, past track record etc.

Top Tips

It is advisable to be very specific about your housing needs and related preferences.

Verify whether the portal offers map-based searches of the micro-location that you are interested in before putting in your parameters and requirements.