FineAustinLiving to debut top-tier search tools for Austin Real Estate

The hunt for the most user-friendly online real estate home search tool in Austin Texas has ended! And it didn’t end up on www.AustinHomeSearch.com, the consumer website run by the Austin Board of Realtors, or even on the recently revised www.REALTOR.com. We’ve taken a look at hundreds of agent (and brokerage)websites, not only in Austin but all across the country, and quite frankly, found their search functionality to be sorely lacking. Or at least using “yesterday’s technology platforms.”  The explosion of the Internet era has brought us within reach of the Holy Grail of property search functionality, and we’ve recently licensed the technology right on our own agent website at www.TheRealtyProTeam.com , and soon will be launching an even more robust set of tools with the launch of the www.FineAustinLiving.com  website in January 2009!

What makes a great property search page?  For one thing, users tell us they like to search by map.  You can zoom in and out as well as click the map and drag it to an area you want to look more closely at.  You can search by school district, subdivision and other criteria.  Of course there are the standard things like property type (home, condo, lease, commercial…), number of bedrooms, price range, waterfront and other criteria, but it gets better.  You can build a search and save it to come back to later.  In fact, you can build a number of searches to come back to!  When you see a particular listing that you want more information about, you can save it in a folder marked “favorites.”  If the status of the listing changes, that change will be noted.  If the listing sells or is taken off the market, it will disappear from the favorites folder.

Based upon what I’ve learned from other sources, the vast majority of folks looking for Austin real estate start their searches online many months before setting foot into homes for sale.  They usually go to a real estate website and search for months before looking at much of anything else on the site.  When they start getting serious and the time to look in person draws near, many people will then do more research on our site or on others.  They will look at schools, recreation, information about Lake Travis and many other things. Our RealtyProTeam.com website has many pages dedicated to giving people information and resources about moving to the Austin and Lake Travis area, and from the feedback we’ve received, folks have found the site to be a really good resource. We’re always looking to improve, however, so that’s why with the upcoming launch of FineAustinLiveing.com we’ve re-written the rule book on what an Austin real estate listing website should be!

As always, we hope you Let Us Show You the Fine Art of Austin Real Estate.  Let one of our experienced, trained professionals at The RealtyPro Team assist you with your next real estate transaction. We’d be honored to be of service. Visit us online at www.TheRealtyProTeam.com  or give us a call at 512-402-9800 today.