[Sigia-l] Locale and real estate (was Re: notation for locales

[Andrew Boyd]

On 8/2/07, James Aylett <james at tartarus.org> wrote:
> That's true - but if you bundle all the realtor services together into
> one big website you start wanting to filter based on location context
> (whether it's where you are now, or where you want to move
> to). Whether this is actually a locale issue depends, I suspect, on
> your IA - on how you're thinking about your data. It might simply be a
> filter that has nothing to do with locale. (As it is with most house
> buying websites in the UK, at least.)

totally oblique to the topic so far - I'm looking at housing options
at the moment and use a particular site (allhomes.com.au) because it
does not have any listings for anywhere that is more than a couple of
hours drive from where I live (and it is faster than the
alternatives). If I was moving to another area entirely (region or
country) then I would use a different site.

Here's the thing: for any fixed-place item (like an apartment), is it
possible to decouple fixed-place thinking? Or will locale always be
one of the vital considerations?

And following on from that - is real estate the only thing that is
fixed-place? We can buy cars from anywhere in the country/region in
which we live, we can find love just about anywhere, we can buy stuff
on auction sites and have it shipped, we can get books from Amazon -
are places to live the last geographically fixed saleable items?

Cheers, Andrew

---
Andrew Boyd
http://facibusreviews.com/blog