RISMEDIA, Nov. 10, 2008-Diverse Solutions, a leader in real estate technology, has recently released a bevy of new features and improvements for their dsSearchAgent mapping IDX solution, the company has announced. dsSearchAgent, the highly acclaimed MLS IDX software created by Diverse Solutions, was, the company says, already one of the easiest to use and most highly desired property search applications by agents and brokers alike due to its close integration with Google Maps and its nearly instant search interface.
With the recent changes, the company adds that dsSearchAgent has become the platinum standard for real estate agents and brokers who want to place a real estate search application onto their website.
Among the myriad of changes in the new release is a completely re-engineered search panel. Building off of the success of the previous search panel, the new release seamlessly blends both the large number of search options and the search slider and text box combination that initially made dsSearchAgent so popular into a completely customizable and easy-to-use property location system. New abilities in the search panel allow website visitors to search for properties based on surrounding schools and/or school districts as well as properties where the price has dropped a certain percentage over a period of time.
One particularly exciting new feature, the company says, allows website visitors to take advantage of dsSearchAgent’s proprietary pre-foreclosure and bank owned searching system for MLS-listed properties. While many MLS’s don’t provide information on whether or not individual listings are in pre-foreclosure or have been foreclosed upon, dsSearchAgent’s unique foreclosure search method analyzes the listing descriptions, in combination with other MLS data, in order to determine whether or not each listing is a pre-foreclosure or foreclosure. The result gives website visitors the ability to search for particular properties that couldn’t easily be found before.
Another new feature that the redesigned search interface incorporates is the ability to search Zillow.com for FSBO listings and Make Me MoveTM homes that aren’t likely to be listed in the MLS. Using the region postings API that Zillow.com released in late July of this year, dsSearchAgent is able to transparently pull listings from Zillow that match a visitors search. Visitors can then explore the search results from Zillow and see property photos and details, all without making them leave the agent’s or broker’s IDX solution.
The new dsSearchAgent release also introduces functionality for agents and broker offices (with broker permission) to very quickly export all of their properties listed in their MLS to Yahoo! Real Estate, Zillow, and Trulia. Using the standard real estate data format agreed upon by the different companies, dsSearchAgent provides a unique URL that agents and brokers can easily give to listing aggregators so that their properties can be viewed by visitors to many of the larger real estate portal websites. Homes.com, Homescape, Oodle, Point2 Technologies, RealEstate.com, Vast.com, and vFlyer had all stated back in January that they too have agreed to adopt the industry-standard feed format.
Both the website visitor registration / lead capture process and the saved search and property favorites management area have been dramatically improved in the latest release. With the latest release of dsSearchAgent, the registration dialog is far more customizable and is presented to the visitor in a way that ultimately increases the ratio of registered visitors to unregistered visitors. Additionally, website visitors are now able to much more easily edit and explore their saved searches and property favorites, take personal notes on properties, and get property updates on individual searches rather than all of their saved searches.
dsSearchAgent’s latest release brings with it a host of other improvements and features, the company says. Among the new improvements are a significant decrease in page load time and an increase in overall speed while searching for properties. Visitors can now also sort properties that match their search by the price drop percentage that each property has experienced. Finally, agents and brokers who use dsSearchAgent are now able to easily create and customize a property “quick search” module that can rapidly be placed into any blog or website.
Other new developments in dsSearchAgent can be found in the Diverse Solutions blog. A demo of the new release of dsSearchAgent can be seen by visiting http://idx.diversesolutions.com.
