MyProperty South Africa launched a POI (Point of Interest) search feature which allows users to find property near popular South African landmarks.
The function is receiving great usage traction from the site’s visitors. The POI search allows the user to enter a landmark name in the search area, eg: shopping centre, police station or school name, and then browse through a list of properties for sale or lease around that point; the company is constantly adding new landmarks to the database.
The POI also indicates the driving time between the specific landmark and properties. Properties can be sorted by nearest driving time, so depending on a property location, certain properties can be easier to access from the user’s point of interest although they are located farther apart.
In the example below the second highlighted property is further away from the point of interest (The Cape Town V&A Waterfront) but a minute quicker to access through traffic.
A combination of Google Maps driving directions and other data, are used to calculate distances and driving times. The company stated that, their aim is to improve the accuracy with time and see if they can integrate real time traffic statistics. This should allow visitors to filter for properties based on traffic conditions based on their hours of work.
Visitors can furthermore filter for properties in a radius or sort properties based on driving time or distance.
Click here for an example.
