Bring Your Properties to LifeBetter connect with your customers by using Microsoft Virtual Earth to help clients visualize your listings with rich imagery showing property and neighborhood details. Add deep value by integrating other key data, including zoning information, property lines, and school districts.
Coldwell Banker
Coldwell Banker sought to improve the home search mapping capabilities on its Web site--to present properties in the context of neighborhoods, and to make its mapping more intuitive. The company’s Virtual Earth application enables buyers to see properties in the context of nearby schools, parks, and churches. The maps allow users to zoom, pan, and see different views seamlessly.
Coldwell Banker Commercial
Coldwell Banker Commercial wanted to provide its affiliates with an innovative online mapping tool. It developed an award-winning Web site based on Microsoft Virtual Earth and Microsoft MapPoint Web Service, which uses the dynamic bird's eye1 view and three-dimensional viewing options of Virtual Earth to give brokers and affiliates a competitive advantage.
CenterPoint
Industrial real-estate developer CenterPoint needed a way to quickly and accurately assess both properties it owns and potential acquisitions. The company used Virtual Earth, which enables it to plot properties on a map and overlay the images with data from several sources. This data visualization has increased productivity and enhanced decision making, boosting CenterPoint’s business growth.
Cyberhomes
Fidelity National Real Estate wanted the fastest possible time to market for a consumer-oriented Web site for the residential real estate market. The result, www.cyberhomes.com, went into production in just four months using Virtual Earth, and delivers customized content 10 times faster than with older technologies. The site also features rich mapping imagery overlaid with data and animation.
Houston Association of Realtors
The Houston Association of Realtors provides online real estate services for property buyers and agents in Houston, Texas. The association wanted to make online searching of more than 60,000 properties easy and exciting for agents and buyers. The association used Microsoft Virtual Earth to integrate mapping functions with its property search applications, creating an engaging search experience.
John L. Scott
John L. Scott strives to continually provide a better online experience through detailed, robust information for its properties in the Pacific Northwest. The company recently deployed Virtual Earth and its three-dimensional aerial views and interactive technology onto its site. The new experiential way to see homes from a 45-degree view boosted online visits to their highest levels ever.
LoopNet
LoopNet is an online commercial real estate marketplace with some of the industry's highest numbers for property listings, traffic, and market coverage. LoopNet chose the Virtual Earth platform for high resolution satellite, bird’s eye, and aerial imagery, and interactive mapping. LoopNet reports a 33 percent increase in the number of properties viewed per day using the enhanced site.
MarketLinx
A significant number of real estate agents in North America use online Multiple Listing Services (MLS) provided by MarketLinx. Demand for more sophisticated search tools prompted the company to select Virtual Earth to build dynamic interactive property search and evaluation functionality. The new technology gives agents and consumers rich visuals and detailed demographic data to streamline real estate transactions.
Rightmove
The popular U.K. real estate site Rightmove decided to launch a related mapping site, AboutMyPlace, which pops up in property searches to give house-hunters local information about the areas around properties. The site uses Virtual Earth as its base mapping platform, layered with rich functionality that has led it to become one of the leading mapping sites in the U.K.
Sperry Van Ness
Sperry Van Ness, a fast-growing U.S. commercial real estate firm, uses Virtual Earth in its online tracking system so that agents can search for properties more quickly. It also incorporated the platform into an automated publishing solution that saves Sperry Van Ness's users an estimated total of 75,000 hours a year in creating brochures and property Web sites.
See more real estate customers
What Real Estate Companies Can Do with Virtual Earth
Strengthen Customer Connections
- Engage customers with bird’s eye1 and hybrid views to provide property details as well as surrounding amenities, such as banks and schools.
- Rely on more geocoding data than in any other mapping solution—covering more than 85 million addresses in the U.S. alone.
Improve Business Insight
- Track client behaviors by visualizing demographic statistics to help predict areas of growth.
- Gain insight by viewing layers of data on a map, such as housing starts and mortgage trends.
Grow Through Innovation
- Deliver new online offerings that drive your customers from the Web to your properties as well as to your branches.
- Create better connections with your global customers with localized maps in several languages.
1. Available in many metropolitan areas. Not available for government customers.
