A quick mention for PropertyGuru who recently won the Google Maps ‘Mashup’ contest at Google’s Australian Developer Day as voted for by those who attended. A Google Maps ‘Mashup’ is a website or application that uses the Google Maps API and other data to present information on Google Maps.
PropertyGuru alows home buyers to locate potential properties by moving an interactive Google map to any area in Australia, bringing up pins for properties that meet their budget and requirements.
PropertyGuru appears to be pulling its data from Domain. Overall the site is clean, well designed and fast and for my eyes beats Domain hands down in all three areas. One would expect them to start aggregating listings from other property listing sites and inevitably one would expect sites like this to begin challenging the ‘big media’ sites that currently control Australia’s online property listings.
I am not sure how long it took to put this site together, but together with all the reports I am hearing on how easy these Google Maps mashups are I am inspired to give it a go. If events like this from Google can encourage developers to get involved then surely they have achieved their objective.
Update:
Lachlan one of the creators of the site contacted us and had this to add:
“The site was developed as a side project for around 3-4 months from concept to production. The amount of time spent developing was quite small and you’re correct in saying that the google API’s made making the site very easy, and fun.”
Also, apologies to PropertyGuru for incorrectly linking to their site, I will try and better proof read my posts (or not post so late).
