Real estate websites offer home owners, landlords the opportunity to list their homes or apartments, and help home seekers to find their dream house more easily online. Use of internet has quicken things up for the potential home buyers. They can now easily log onto the websites from their home and know about all the real estate business information in matter of few seconds. The information is easily accessible. Nowadays even properties can be sold or purchased online through the use of credit cards as the payment method. Real Estate is a business which has prospered greatly online.

Most real estate website also provides comprehensive home services directory for home shopping and renovation needs. These directory usually consists of the following categories: apartment rentals, financing, gardening, home renovation, insurance, lawyers, moving & relocation, and real estate services.

Interactive Maps for Real Estate Websites

Interactive maps seem to be everywhere on the web now. Visitors to a real estate map would certainly expect to see them. Many real estate websites are already using Google Map to show location of homes for sale and rent plotted on the maps.

While Google Map is useful in showing location information about a property (you can even see a satellite view of each property), its free usage and public accessibility also means it is designed for general purpose only.

It would be difficult to use Google Map to link with a real estate website's backend database system.

For example, you might need to setup a real estate map, with states and counties in different color to indicate the covered areas, total number of listings or branch offices. You might also want to display information upon mouse rollover on a state or county, or use different icons to pinpoint special properties.

When user click on a particular state or county, you might also want the map to pass parameter to your backend database, so that the corresponding information and query results can be presented to the user.

The above are some general usage of interactive map on real-estate websites, but is very difficult to configure if using Google Map. In addition, using Google Map might also distract your visitors to other places showing on the Google Map, including your competitor's listing on the same map as Google Map is designed as a free service for the public, not just for your own company.

To create an interactive real-estate map, another option is to use an interactive map building software.

Most interactive mapping software come with ready made US map templates, including county maps for every state. You can set the color, title, link of each county, and also input text and image for mouse over tooltip. You can create national, regional, state, and county maps with clickable areas, and can be easily embed to web page without any Javascript or API coding.

You can also link this interactive map with your internal database listing and system backend. When visitor click on a state, county or a property image, the map will call a search query, passing a set of parameters, and then display the corresponding search result.

You can still offer Google Maps to your visitors, and Google Map provides more accurate image data and with a higher resolution, and is very useful for getting directions and finding addresses. The optimum combination is that have Google map co-exist with your own interactive map system, for example, include a link to Google Map as part of your query results when user click on a hot-spot on your interactive map. This way you can provide custom content, map driven database query function, together with the accurate road map images from Google.

There are many websites specializing in real estate. In Australia and the US, Google has started to add properties for sale to its mapping service. Users of Google Maps are now able to see a selection of homes for sale and rent plotted on the maps, which could become the competitor of many real estate websites. As a real estate operator, you can provide comprehensive local real estate and rental listings, and online resource for real estate market statistics including home values, listing prices, number of homes for sale and many other information. It is the information you can provide about your properties listing differentiate you from your competitors.

That is a real estate map on steroids. Download iMapBuilder to create your own flash real estate map today.

Other possible application of a flash real estate map:

Buyer / Seller / Branch office by countries (or states / counties)

You can use a clickable interactive world map to keep track of buyers and sellers by countries. Your visitors can see buyers and sellers (with quantities and prices) by country AND then find further details via hover-mouse as to who the buyers and sellers are.

World energy map with oilfields

If you are an energy company, you can create an interactive world energy map, showing oilfields in the middle east, map of offshore oil drilling, or map of labor network in the region.

You can then add clickable points, icons, regions, and display additional notes on mouse over to make it a lot easier for your visitors to find specific information in just a few clicks.

US property searching tool

Create a interactive map for the properties that are listed for sale by your company in different states or counties in the United States. Your visitors can choose a territory by clicking on it, for example, click on their desired state or county on your property map, and then see the list of properties as search results, with link to their corresponding web page.

You can also use this clickable interactive map to provide specific details about the properties such as nearest schools,public services, financial centers, and places of entertainment.

A surveillance Department

Can make an interactive map by importing the floorplan image of a Casino/Complex/Campus/Hotel, and then convert it to a flash interactive map. Clickable custom icons and hotspots can be added to reference surveillance cameras, and display details about the camera on mouseover.

An academic librarian

Use iMapBuilder to create a interactive world map with clickable links, and using dots to pinpoint important cities and towns. Students can click on a region, or a point which links to a list of "hot news topics" for the country selected in mouse-click (or a city/town)

iMapBuilder interactive map software can help you to create interactive maps, clickable world map easily, it is simple enough to use by anyone who are already using MS-Windows for word processing or web surfing.

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More About iMapBuilder Interactive Map Software

What is iMapBuilder - Interactive Map Software?



iMapBuilder interactive maps software is an user-friendly, interactive map making software for MS-Windows. You can use iMapbuilder to create an interactive flash map for websites, multimedia presentaions, or as a branch office locator. Map editing is easy using iMapbuilder, no any programming skills or additional flash editing software is required.


 

What maps does iMapBuilder interactive map software support?



In current version, iMapbuilder includes the following maps:

• Interactive World Map
• Interactive US Map
• Interactive UK Map
• Interactive Canda Map


You can also import your own map image in JPG/PNG format, to create an interactive map easily.

For additional flash maps of more countries, please visit our flash maps gallery. You might also like to checkout some custom flash map we have developed which are used for real estate websites, travel agencies, and as branch offices locators.


 

How to create map with flash using iMapbuilder? Do I need any programming knowledge?

One of the greatest advantages of iMapBuilder is that you don't need to have any technical knowledge what so ever. You will be able create your customized Flash maps in a matter of few clicks. No programming or Actionscript knowledge is required. Simply use the iMapBuilder map wizard to select a flash map template, edit the map using few mouse clicks, and you will have a interactive map ready to use with your color settings, text, and links. It is as easy as using your word processor software programs.


 

Check FAQ section for more questions related to map design and usage >>>>>