In the competitive world of real estate buying and selling, brokers and agents are eager to adopt the latest technology if it gives them an upper hand on their competition. For an independent broker, the challenge is in being able to offer comparable services to those that are available from the large firms in the area. Obviously the independent broker does not have the financial clout of a large firm, nor does she have access to the services provided by a dedicated technology staff member. To her credit, the broker was quick to realize the importance of the web in delivering information about her properties but she has been unable to develop an effective system for conveying information about the location of the properties.
Solution:
XMap 5.0 GIS Editor has been developed to meet the needs of the company, organization, or individual who wants to adopt advanced mapping technology but does not want to pay too much, and doesn’t have time to attend a lengthy training program before it can be utilized. A simple geocoding feature allows all properties to be quickly displayed on the map. Queries can then be built against this dataset to allow prospective clients to select the characteristics of the properties that are of interest to them, which generates a list of relevant properties and highlights them on the map. After processing the data in this way, the broker can quickly and easily create a custom Web mapping site using the XMap Web tools included in the software, and publish her properties dataset. Visitors to the site can zoom and click on any property to see all the relevant details and can search for properties using the pre-built queries. The broker controls the contents of the site, the symbolization that is applied to each property, and she can even generate reports that show how many users have visited her site. The remarkable aspect of this technological solution is that the entire process of converting a simple list of properties to an interactive online GIS, takes less than half and hour.
Built With:
XMap Web (site created using XMap 5.0 GIS Editor)
BaseMap:
DeLorme’s road and point data
User Additions:
Geocoded property listings, published to the XMap Web site
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