Zoomf Blog - UK Property Blog.

At least that is what THEY would like you to believe

There is an interesting debate happening over on the House Price Crash website. Basically, home owners are up in arms about a recently launched map service from the Met Police in London whereby anyone can view ‘crime stats’ for their borough.

Why is this such a threat to the home-owner?

The internet is basically the biggest depository of information ever devised by man. As a result, we are all empowered to be able to do property research in a much more efficient manner. I read somewhere that the average consumer in the UK does an average of 12 hours of online research when looking for property. Do home-owners actually believe in 2008 that they will be able to ‘hide’ the unsavory bits about their property’s location?

Whether it comes from the internet, from the council or directly from speaking to your knowledgeable estate agent, the buyer is going to find out everything they can before starting that mortgage paperwork. This includes how safe your neighborhood is in comparison to other areas of interest.

Maybe home-owners should consider what they can do to ‘clean-up’ their neighborhood ( get invovled ! ) rather than fight the unstoppable force for transparency that is the web.

One of the most interesting areas of property online is the mapping functionality. If you’re looking for places to buy or let, you always want to see the location on a map. This gives you a basis for where the property is located in relation to transport, greenery, schools and anything else that the map provider provided.  With the launch of Internet Explorer 8, the mapping will be part of the user experience. This means that when the browser detects an address on any web-page, it will attempt to map the address automatically. This small innovation should begin to put an end to one of the most inefficient processes on the internet - having to always go to a map site, type in the address, and look at the map. This should provide more innovation opportunities for everyone, including agents, the property software guys and the portals.

So you’re thinking it’s time to wait out the property crunch but you want to keep an eye on any low-hanging fruit? Are you also a bit of a DIY-er? Then look no further. We’ve got 320 homes that already have planning permission in the Greater London area. Below is the Google map (via KML) containing all the latest ‘planning permission results’ from London.

There’s also this new website called Betternest that, according to the Times, will help you improve your home rather than re-locate.

View Larger Map

So google has finally started to activate street view in the UK. Brilliant. I’m sure the privacy hounds will be out in force to say stop driving down my street and taking more pictures. As for us websites in the property market, I wonder which of us will be the first to try integrating these pictures into the user experience.

Maybe we’ll just wait and see how the quality and quantity factor rates first