Here at AG, we pour over a great deal of data every day regarding brokerages and the real estate sector overall and we feel lucky that we get to see the real estate world from a bird’s eye perspective and have been forecasting trends effectively for several years now. We recently spotted a real estate company taking part in a trend that until now, no one else has.
Growing discount brokerage Redfin has announced that their mapping feature will now offer clusters of listings that when zoomed in on offer other clusters so that search results are based on proximity. This change may seem minor or like simple eye candy, but we see so much more in their announcement- they’re adhering to modern web standards by using HTML5 with CSS transitions and offering up cross browser compatibility.
Redfin’s update will likely go overlooked in the industry and in two years when the self proclaimed tech savvy brokers get around to following suit, they’ll call themselves pioneers. We have been watching the advancement of web standards as the fight between programming languages heats up (and trust us, Flash vs. HTML5 is a whopper of a fight) and we have wondered when a firm would step up and adhere to standards that are forward facing rather than simply use 2005 technologies and call themselves innovative.
Redfin drew a line in the sand this month. It’s a small line and you probably can’t quite see it yet, it’s that faint, but it’s there. We’re hoping that any indie brokerages on the fringe that have started implementing these web standards will step up to bat, because we haven’t heard of any yet. Redfin has separated themselves from the pack and whether you like their model or not, they’re investing in future technologies without worry about the “tech savvy” agents that are still stuck on how to sign up for “the Twitter” while unaware that they are falling behind the tech curve.
