Real estate search and marketing company Trulia has taken to the streets.
Trulia.com has integrated Google’s Street View imagery tools, which allow users to view street-level digital images of homes for about 30 metro areas across the nation.
Trulia users can also view property locations on an illustrated map, a satellite image, or a hybrid satellite image with labeled streets. The new imagery tools launched Tuesday.
Street View imagery is available in the following market areas: Albany and Schenectady, Boise, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Fort Worth, Houston, Indianapolis, Juneau, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Manchester, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New York City, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Providence, Research Triangle Park, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco Bay Area, St. Paul and Tucson.
Pete Flint, Trulia founder and CEO, said that the Trulia integration with Street View parks the user "literally at the front door" for a given address and "enables you to walk up and down the street and peer into the windows."
The Street View imagery was recorded by an array of digital cameras mounted on a vehicle, so users can spin around 360 degrees, zoom in or out, and virtually tour a street, neighborhood or city area by searching in areas covered by the vehicle.
"It is really the closest thing to putting yourself into the neighborhood," Flint said. The Street View images will now be the default map view at the Trulia site where the imagery is available, he said.
Google released an application program interface, or API, for the Street View technology 10 days ago, Flint said — these tools will allow programmers to integrate the Street View technology for other uses.
Trulia is the largest U.S. real estate site that uses Google Maps as its mapping platform, and the implementation of Google’s Street View is the largest of its kind to date, Flint said. "We’re the only national real estate site to integrate it."
Trulia.com has information about over 2 million homes for sale. The company accepts data feeds from real estate brokerage companies. Flint said he does not have an exact count for how many properties at the site are now accessible through the added Street View feature.
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