Realtor.com has made it easier for homebuyers to filter listings based on schools.
Users can enter a school name into its property search bar to pull up all for-sale properties that fall within the school’s attendance zone.
The feature gives realtor.com a slight edge over Zillow and Trulia when it comes to school-based search, while bringing the listing portal up to speed with Redfin.
Like Zillow and Trulia, realtor.com has long allowed homebuyers to visualize school attendance zones on a map to see which schools serve which listings.
The new feature simply lets users center their search on schools from the get-go — which Zillow and Trulia do not.
This aligns with the search strategy of many homebuyers.
School quality ranks as a top concern among house hunters, and realtor.com said the new search functionality “has been the most requested feature by realtor.com visitors.”
Redfin takes things a step further by allowing users to sign up for a listing alert whenever a new listing served by a specific school hits the market.
The realtor.com enhancement points toward what appears to be an accelerated pace of innovation for the listing portal, a trend that appeared to kick into gear after realtor.com operator Move was acquired by News Corp.
In a press release, realtor.com emphasized some other recent enhancements to the site, including the integration of Matterport 3-D home tours and the addition of a wealth of community and market information.
Both realtor.com and Zillow Group wiped traffic light color coding from their numerical school ratings following an NPR article that explored whether mixing school data with property search tools can steer homebuyers away from communities with high concentrations of minorities.
Zillow and Trulia now present school ratings in different shades of blue, while realtor.com shows all ratings in the same grey color. Both source their school ratings from GreatSchools.
Realtor.com wouldn’t say why it made the color change, while Zillow previously said it dropped traffic light coloring, in part, to reflect that GreatSchool ratings alone don’t define school quality.
