Adding Muscle to Mapping & Searching Homes

If you’re like me, you’ve checked the price tags on the homes in the most expensive area of your city and wondered what it would be like to buy a home in that neighborhood.  If that day comes, how will you know what is for sale in that area?  Or, how will you find homes for sale in your price range?  Or maybe you have struck it rich and only want to see homes in the area that have six or more bedrooms.

Zillow is taking steps to make scenarios like these possible. As you have seen highlighted in this blog over the past few days, we’ve introduced some new updates to the site, including those around our Map and Search capabilities.  We are making it easier to discover details of the homes and neighborhoods at a glance. 

Presently, when you search an address, neighborhood, city or ZIP code on Zillow, you will be able to discover which homes are for sale, which have a Make Me Move price, and which have been recently sold. You’ll see a corresponding flag in the virtual lawn of that house. In a moment of medical inspiration, I dubbed these flagged treasures “femur” homes, after the anatomical name for the thigh bone. This acronym, FMR, stands for (F)or sale, (M)ake Me Move, and (R)ecently sold. It’s been funny to hear people around the office – myself included – talking about searching for these “leg bones” ever since.

Once you enter your search criteria, the FMR numbers (located on the left side of the map) will change dynamically as you manipulate the map by zooming, panning, or dragging the map.  You could be looking at a single home at street level, or the entire state of Washington just by zooming.  Want to see more of the map?  Just click on the little diamond next to the compass to "hide" the FMR section.

If you want to dig a little deeper into the data, just below the map is the results list that contains more detailed content — including thumbnail photos of homes (if owners or agents have uploaded them) — that can be sorted by sale price, number of bedrooms, bathrooms and lots more.  With all the slicing and dicing, you can see what the least expensive home is for sale in New York as well as the most expensive.

It will likely take some time before we have a ton of FMR results and that’s because we’re asking owners and agents to post homes for sale and set Make Me Move prices. The more postings and MMM’s we get, the better experience everyone will have.  Not to be forgotten, you can always see our Zestimate value through the "All Other Homes" selection.

Personally, I’m eager to check how many homes in my neighborhood (Eastlake) will have a Make Me Move price of over $2 million (as of today the there are four at $2 million or above ) I’ll also be keeping an eye on how many homes come up for sale in San Francisco under $500k with more than 3 bedrooms (please email me if you find one).

The search is on! And it’s not just about Zestimates any more…