The gorgeous rolling hills of the California Central Coast is one of the loveliest places in the Golden State. William Randolf Hearst knew it, so he built Hearst Castle. Many others discovered the white sand beaches of Cayucos or the world’s best farmers market in the city of San Luis Obsipo. Once America saw the Acadamy Award winning film, Sideways, millions discovered the excellent wine and beautiful scenery of the Central Coast.
Now, in association with SLOhomestore.com, Realius is pleased to announce the opening of our second Fantasy Real Estate market – San Luis Obispo. If you are already registered to play Price Me Now, you can use your same username and password to start playing. Good luck pricing this area. And if you see the home of your dreams, our friends at SLOhomestore are ready to help you make your fantasy a reality.
Last week, Zillow released boundary files for over 7,000 neighborhoods throughout the US. Previously Zillow had provided neighborhood demographic data via its GetDemographics API but had not provided boundary definitions of neighborhoods. It didn’t take Andrew Mattie of Diverse Solutions long to build this great mashup with Google Maps and Zillow’s data.
Defining neighborhoods is a tricky undertaking. I took a class in high school titled, ‘The Urbanization of San Francisco’. I clearly remember our first homework assignment. We were tasked to draw maps of our neighborhoods. People came to class with wildly diverse maps, in both detail and scale. Some folks thought of their neighborhoods as very small areas while others thought of their neighborhoods as much larger and less detailed. This exercise got us to examine our cognitives maps and how we think about the spaces we live in.
San Francisco’s SFGIS site provides two sets of neighborhood boundary files for the City, one from the San Francisco Association of Realtors and one from the Department of City Planning. As you might imagine, the realtors break the City down to many more neighborhoods than Department of City Planning does. By exploring Andrew’s mashup I realized that Zillow uses the Department of City Planning neighborhood boundary files instead of the San Francisco Association of Realtors boundary files. Here is a map of San Francisco’s Planning neighborhoods:
An example of a neighborhood missing from Zillow’s boundary files is Cow Hollow. Trulia divides San Francisco into the neighborhoods defined by the San Francisco Association of Realtors. This screenshot shows the Trulia boundaries for the Marina, Cow Hollow and Pacific Heights.
How do you define your neighborhood?
We have continued to ask people signing up to our mailing list where they would like to play real estate games. California is clearly a hot spot of interest. Here is a map of California, zoom in to see what markets that people are interested in playing.
View Larger Map
Zoom out and explore other areas people would like to play! Head on over to Realius.com to sign up for the mailing list so you can tell us where you would like to play.
We have been sending out surveys asking folks on our mailing list where they would like to play real estate games. Here is a map showing some real estate markets around the globe that people are interested in playing.
View Larger Map
Zoom out and explore the map to see where else people would like to play! Head on over to Realius.com to sign up for the mailing list so you can tell us where you would like to play.
Happy Geography Awareness Week! Thanks to Ronald Reagan, the third week in November is Geography Awareness Week. At this point in the post, it is only fair for me to disclose that I was a geography major. Over the past few years, tools like Google Maps and Google Earth have made geographic information available and meaningful to the masses on an unprecedented scale. Everyday there are new mashups to check out. Keep your eye on Google Maps Mania to see the latest and greatest Google Maps mashups. Get involved yourself at Geocommons.com, where you can upload geographic data, make and share maps. If you have a gripe with a neighbor and you’d like get that off your chest, head over to Rotten Neighbor where you can upload rants about neighbors to their exact residences on a map. If you would like to see hyper-local news by browsing a map, check out Yourstreet.com.
We recognize the integral role that spatial and economic context plays in the valuation of real estate. When asking a player what she thinks a home is worth in our first game, we provide price points of local, recent comparable sales. We put that data in a geographic context by mapping the locations of those recent sales. Check out a screenshot from the game. Each comparable sale in the table is show as a red house on the map.
Click here try out the game in the Oakland/Berkely area of Northern California!
While building Realius, we have been all over the Internet looking for great place-based games. One of my favorite is Geosense.
You get points for selecting the correct location of the city listed at the top of the page. You can play the World, Europe, or USA. Give it a shot alone, then play against someone. You better know your geography or else it is a bit embarrassing. It is fun, I promise.
This is not a requirement for success at Fantasy Real Estate, but knowing where Belfast, UK is located will impress your Irish friends.
Jay is Games has a good review of the game here.
If you care about “place” like we do at Realius, then you’ll love what is happening at the Where 2.0 conference. If you are tired of looking at rooftops on your satellite map, try the new Street View inside Google maps. Street View is brought you by the guys at Immersive Media. The coverage is limited, but you can see where it is going. With Street View, the neighborhood from the street level is just a click away.
Between all the maps, data, and 3D images, the one service that was simple and useful for the consumer is the integration of natural sound tracks into Google Maps or Google Earth. Referred to as the Wild Soundscape Project, My Sanctuary, has assembled:
… over 3,500 hours of wild soundscapes and nearly 15,000 species. The mission: To help connect people to the wild by preserving, presenting, and protecting the voice of the natural world.
The most moving Soundscape is a pair of recordings from Northern California. The recording compares the sounds of the landscape before and after selective logging. The images of the forest have not changed, but the soundscape tells the whole story.
If you want all the news from the Where 2.0 show, check out the O’Reilly Blog.
