Google’s “parking difficulty” and “find parking” + a Real Estate Idea
You may have seen the news from Google Maps that they added “parking difficulty” coverage to 25 more cities (doubling coverage from 25 cities to 50).
That of course got me thinking about the real estate use case for the difficulty of parking near a specific address.
A “Parking Score” to help a renter/buyer assess how much of a pain in the rear parking will be near their new home. Even if they have a reserved spot in the building for themselves, most people entertain guests from time to time — and parking for those people can often be a huge pain in the rear.
WalkScore is the most successful startup that has scored individual properties — other than Zillow of course. Other companies working on “scoring” include Sun Number (prior coverage here), UtilityScore, Enerscore, and HowLoud.
Who is going to take a crack at scoring every home in the country (really, just urban areas) based on the difficulty of parking nearby?
Andrew Weinberger
Posted at 11:30h, 30 AugustPersonally I don’t think a parking score or even walk score is all that useful for a RE site. It just seems super gimmicky in general and is just more fluff that will clutter each listing page.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 12:21h, 30 AugustAgreed – it’s not a huge standalone business, nor is it insanely useful (for everyone). Some people don’t care about walkscore either, that doesn’t mean it’s not valuable to a segment of the population.
Have a read through this: https://geekestateblog.com/hook-entire-real-estate-industry-revolves-around/
Andrew Weinberger
Posted at 13:23h, 30 AugustIt’s always tough to cater to everyone. We’ve been debating what data to add on our site and it’s really tricky. It’s even tougher at scale as something like a walkscore might be useful in some areas but useless in others (like in NYC where everything gets a ridiculously high walkscore).
eligr
Posted at 12:33h, 30 AugustParking data in general, including zoning, is often difficult to find at scale for a city. From a livability standpoint, this data would be really helpful, potentially more on the rental side than the transaction side.