Dream Town is an innovator in Internet real estate practices and advanced home search technology. The company is the first to develop an Apple-authorized iPhone App for Chicago real estate and it is the only site that provides "real time" home sales statistics citywide by neighborhood and by individual residential building (http://www.dreamtown.com/
"Over nine out of ten house hunters begin their home search on the Internet. The real estate marketplace is virtually entirely online now and it's our job to address the need that presents for both home buyers and home sellers," said Yuval Degani, president and co-founder of Dream Town Realty. "We looked at how buyers were searching for homes, be it on their computer or cell phone, and developed brand new technology to coincide with their habits and provide more control in a user-friendly way."
One of DreamTown.com's most ground-breaking modifications is its Interactive Map Search, which operates through a totally new technology. It presents 4 separate ways to look for Chicago homes for sale using a detailed city map powered by Google and the company's propriety neighborhoods map. The new function allows users to Draw a Search Area on the map to indicate where they want to look for listings; select a Radius Distance to create a circular search zone around a central address or cross streets; frame an area in three clicks of the mouse with the Rubber Band Search; or choose areas to search with a clickable neighborhoods map. The new searches show where homes for sale are located on the map, list property details, and link to individual pages with more info and photos of each (http://www.dreamtown.com/
"Chicago has an extremely intricate landscape of neighborhood boundaries, so we designed a highly-sensitive precision search function that allows users to navigate the city with ease," said Mr. Degani. "This is such new technology we created a series of minute-long tutorial web videos to explain how to use the Interactive Map Searches. I think users are going to be surprised by the operative simplicity of such a sophisticated search tool. You can literally just pick a spot and see what's for sale in the nearby vicinity."
Access to real-time home sales statistics is another advance in online Chicago real estate introduced by the fresh face of DreamTown.com. The site is the only consumer source for live citywide data on average Chicago home prices, market time, number of sales and other real estate stats segmented by neighborhood, even down to the individual building level with figures on average price per square foot. This type of information has never been available to Chicago home buyers before. It is updated every 10 minutes and provides results from the last 30 days to the past three years. Visitors can view monthly, quarterly and annual stats on detached and attached housing for every Chicago neighborhood and find the most recent sales activity for close to 900 Chicago condo buildings.
With the launch of its redeveloped site, Dream Town unveiled a Mobile Phone Real Estate Search initiative. The search engine runs on a modified interface designed specifically for mobile devices. It allows users to search for Chicago property listings by neighborhood or zip code from their cell phones. There is also a function to locate homes for sale near any entered address. Mobile device users get direct contact info for more than 120 Chicago real estate agents via the program and homeowners can find out what their property is worth with the Home Value Analysis option. An additional iPhone application is currently under development by Dream Town for use with the popular Apple product. It is the first official iPhone App created for Chicago real estate searches. Release date for the Dream Town iPhone App is not yet set.
The Dream Town Blog is regularly picked up by national websites as a viable source for real estate news. Its content covers the Chicago housing market, general industry analysis and other related topics both on the local and national fronts. The blog is carried by a team of a dozen real estate writers with expertise in a wide range of fields including mortgage financing, law, home inspection, commercial and residential real estate. Readers can learn more about the credentials and background of Dream Town's bloggers and contact them directly at www.dreamtown.com/
The latest version of DreamTown.com also offers new informational pages on selling and buying homes in Chicago, including Dream Town's 10-Step Plan to Market Chicago Homes and the benefits of Dream Town's Agent Advantage. To address the increase in foreclosures and short sales in Chicago, the company has added a Bargain Property Search that targets distressed property listings.
