Filed under: Cool & Online | Tags: Google, housing, letting, london, Nestoria, Please can I sleep on your floor, property, rental, review, Right Move, Search, website
Whilst looking for somewhere to live in London (that offers more than one bedroom for less than £1 million pounds and therefore is affordable on the income of someone who doesn’t own an Arab state’s oil reserves) I recently stumbled upon probably the best property website – Nestoria.
Nestoria is a website along the same lines as rightmove.com and FindaProperty.com – lots of properties brought together by one website. Where it differs is in the implementation of this idea. In my mind, Nestoria is how you would build a website to search for property if you really sat down and thought about it.
Borrowing heavily from Google, Nestoria has a number of features that make it stand out from the crowd:
- Uncluttered entry point
Using the classic Google-style search page, Nestoria keeps the homepage simple. Everything is focussed on the one job at hand – identifying what you’re looking for. - Intuitive functionality
Start typing and a list of possible towns and areas appear. Sliders to pick minimum and maximum price as well as number of bedrooms. The whole site is filled with small features like this that make it very easy to use. - API
Again, taking the lead from Google, Nestoria offer an API to allow other developers to use the core engine. This feature in itself could well be the key to success – just look at the success of the Google maps API, used widely on the Internet (and on this site!) - Cutting edge
Nestoria provide not only an RSS feed of properties but also a geographically-focussed KML feed. The look and feel of the site is slick and technology is well used to improve the user experience. There’s even a Facebook app (although I’m not 100% convinced it has any purpose!)
It is interesting to see just how focussed the site is on the single job of finding property. There are no real details of any of the properties (pictures, floor plans etc..), it simply links off to other websites for these details.
The website is all about locating a property in an area, and finding out about that area. This is where Nestoria excels, providing information on census, local government, fire, health, parking, schools, shops, tax, transport and even photos of the area – everything you could need to know to get a feel for an area.
If there are any downsides it is perhaps that you can’t look at any photos of the houses (usually the one quick thing that gives me a thumbs up or thumbs down). And maybe the name “Nestoria”!
Overall a well executed property search engine… and I’m off to find a house!
