The use of Google maps has long been a listing display enhancement feature for many real estate agent Websites in one way or another. However, it wasn’t until very recently that Google’s latest mapping innovation, Street View, was made available to individual agent sites as well.
Street View is the newest feature of Google Maps that allows you to literally see a 360 degree “street view” of any location that has been map-enhanced in this way. The best way to see this for yourself is to use Google Maps to view any of the cities that have Street View enabled (go to http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=68384&topic=11640 for a list of cities where Street View is currently available - 40 as of this writing). Then click on the “Street View” option in the upper right hand corner of the map Web page. Those streets that have been continuously photographed (at street level) will show up in blue outline. When you click within any of the blue outlined streets, a little person icon shows up along with a window containing the actual street view image. You can rotate this image by simply dragging your mouse left or right with the mouse button held down. You can also “travel” along the street by clicking the direction arrows imposed in the image. Google even uses a pointer under the icon to indicate which direction you are looking relative to the rest of the map as you rotate the image. And, these street view photos are high resolution images which can be blown up to near full screen size for incredible clarity.
Up until just recently, Street View was not available to 3rd party users of Google Maps (like individual agent sites, or property search sites like Zillow). However, on March 27th, 2008 Google formally released the Street View API (Application Programming Interface). These are the instructions Web designers need to plug Street View capabilities into 3rd party Google Maps. Well it didn’t take long. Literally within three days of the API’s release, individual agent sites were starting to incorporate Street View into their listing’s Google Maps. To the best of my knowledge, Kevin Tomlinson of Miami Beach, FL had the first agent site to feature Street View for his listings. You can see an example of how he uses Street View by going to www.kevintomlinson.com/condo-map.php (be sure to zoom the map a bit to see the roads more clearly). You can expect to see many more agent sites incorporating Street View. This is also true for many of the listing aggregator and search sites. In fact, Trulia.com just announced that they were incorporating Street View into the maps of the areas that have it available. If you are interested in using Google Maps Street view on your site, check with your Web developer, chances are they already know how to do it.
Google really pulled off some magic with Street View. Using a battalion of vehicle-mounted roving cameras that take 360 degree view photos, they have shot many of the streets of the largest U.S. cities. This technique along with a highly intuitive user interface gives the sensation of really “being there” to the person viewing the map. The implications for potential buyers getting a better feel for the surrounding neighborhood of a listing are immediately apparent. This also begs the question if this is a good thing for all listings. All you can do is hope that the day the Google Street View Mobile drove past your listing, a bunch of overstuffed garbage cans or an old junker wasn’t nearby and became irrevocably incorporated into the scenery of your new listing.
