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Local Voices

Instantly See How Close a Property is to Work, Family and Other Important Places

By Thomas Morcom, Branch Vice President of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage’s Prince William Parkway office

When buyers are looking for a new home in the Greater Washington, D.C. Metro area, one of the most important facts they consider is commute time. Coldwell Banker has made that easy with a new, cutting-edge feature on CBmove.com that allows home buyers to enter important places or addresses such as work, schools and relatives to see the distance each listing is to these significant locations.  Each property search result will show how far in driving miles each spoke is to the property.

Most home buyers are concerned about the location of their home and how it will fit into their lifestyle. A high value is placed upon the distance from a new home to their important places, like their work, a parent’s home, a child’s school or doctor’s office. This new tool will allow our website users to instantly see how close these important places are to the properties they are looking up. It will also let users set their mode of transportation, like walking, biking or by automobile.

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To use this feature on the CBmove.com website, a user will start by adding their home search criteria. Once the site has taken the user to the property search results page, a bar on the left-hand side of the screen will display an area called Spokes. Inside the Spokes section, the user can enter up to three important places into this section. The distance from the property to the important place is then listed at the bottom of each property on the search results page. These spokes can also be saved to a user’s HomeBase® inBox, a system that allows users to receive emailed updates based on their search criteria, for future searches.

This feature changes the way consumers will search for real estate and brings geographically targeted searches to a new level. We want to do everything we can to ensure that consumers are getting the best possible experience when searching for a home on our website.

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I’m proud that Coldwell Banker has led the real estate industry in launching new technologies for years. Coldwell Banker was the first national real estate brand to customize its website for smartphone screens, show properties on a GPS device, and launch an iPhone and Android app showcasing its properties. Recently, the company also added new technology to CBmove.com that translates listings into 19 languages and 30 currencies.

To use this new feature to find a property with the right commute time, visit CBmove.com. For more information about properties near the Prince William Parkway, contact our office or call 703.763.1950.

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