Localism update - Neighborhoods, communities, urban villages...

Again, if you don't know about Localism our consumer portal which is under development you can read more here.  As promised we are pushing new features every couple days to get us to an official launch in a few months.  This morning we released an update allowing members to add communities/neighborhoods/urban villages, or whatever they are called in your city.

One frustration I've often heard from consumers or agents a like about real estate sites is the information stops at the city level.  Almost all cities are broken down into smaller regions which often don't have standardized names or boundaries.  This makes it very hard particularly for someone relocating to determine where Kelsey Creek is in Bellevue, or find information in that area of the city.  We've added a simple interface which will allow our members to add these regions within cities as well as place them on a map which will allow us to display more useful information to very soon.  You can already upload photos to the neighborhoods and you will soon be able to add blog posts to them, and also list your profile in them.

To add neighborhoods on Localism.com login using your ActiveRain username and password, navigate to a city and you will see a link on the left hand side of the screen.

Once you choose to add a neighborhood you will be prompted to enter a name and also place a marker on the map representing the approximate center point of the neighborhood within the city.  You will probably have to zoom in using the +- controls to more precisely place the location.  By adding this centerpoint this will allow us to begin displaying maps of the neighborhoods within a city, which will greatly assist consumers and real estate professionals alike.

Please comment on this post if you have any questions.

Update:  Oh, I forgot to mention, we will give out points for adding these neighborhoods, though point distribution is not yet automated.

Update: Points scored on communities are being adjusted right now.  However please know that adding these neighborhoods and their locations is very beneficial to the community.