A new tool for bold brokers

This popped up this week and is worth a look from brokers looking to move ahead of the pack:

outside.in’s new Radar API

As I have stated here before, the neighborhood is where the future of online real estate lies. outside.in has always piqued my interest with their clean aggregation of hyperlocal news. Earlier this year, they launched a service called Radar, which allows users to search news, blog posts, Tweets, and events in the immediate vicinity of a specific location — a house, for example.

With the release of this API, you can now integrate this information with your Website.

Think about this: Brokers typically think about “local data” as school information, demographic stats and amenities information they need to place on their site (usually very poorly, but that’s another post). And that’s all well and good. But everybody’s doing it and it will only get you — and, more importantly, your website user — so far.

This API allows you to get a little closer to answering the “can I live here?” question for your website visitors. It puts their ear to the ground of a neighborhood, to the people and places that make it tick.

Who will be first to implement this?

— Brian Boero