Windermere Real Estate and INRIX Partner to Help Home Buyers Find Properties with the Actual Drive Times

KIRKLAND, Wash., March 13, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Windermere Real Estate and INRIX announced the release of INRIX Drive Time™, a new home-buying feature on Windermere.com that takes the guess work out of one of the most important purchase criteria when considering a new home – how long it will take home buyers to drive to and from work.  Windermere, the largest regional real estate company in the Western U.S., will leverage data from INRIX, the leading international provider of traffic information and driver services, to help home buyers know how long a commute they can expect in traffic between their work and any home for sale on Windermere.com.

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INRIX Drive Time goes beyond other real estate sites that simply provide distance to work in miles or travel times based on traveling the speed limit, to providing Windermere Real Estate customers with drive times based on real-time traffic information. 

"You don't guess at the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, year built or school district, so why should your drive time be any different?" said OB Jacobi, president of Windermere Real Estate. "We're committed to making the home buying experience a pleasant one for our clients, as this is often the biggest purchase they'll ever make. With INRIX, not only will we be able to help home buyers determine their drive time at any time of the day, but our agents will be able to find properties that meet clients' needs faster, ultimately shortening the sales cycle and increasing the overall home buying experience for all involved."

According to the National Association of REALTORS®, 73 percent of all home buyers consider drive time to work a key buying criterion.  Additionally, the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey published last week found 88 percent of American commuters travel to work by car.  Moreover, more than 600,000 of those commuters are facing commutes of at least 50 miles from home taking at least 90 minutes each way.

Windermere is offering INRIX Drive Time to all customers in the 10 states where it does business beginning today.  To determine drive times using this new feature, potential home buyers simply enter their work address into a field directly on the property detail page on Windermere.com. The tool automatically generates an INRIX Drive Time to and from work, as well as a graph that shows how that time varies by different departure times throughout the day.

"Nobody likes sitting in traffic and smart applications of traffic data can help drivers not only save time on their existing commute but help them through the process of deciding on the purchase of a new home," said INRIX CEO, Bryan Mistele. "Using INRIX Drive Time, Windermere Real Estate will be able to better inform its agents and serve clients by arming them with information to improve the home-buying process."

INRIX Drive Time is powered by traffic information sourced from the INRIX Traffic Intelligence Platform, which analyzes data from various public and private sources ranging from government road sensors, official accident and incident reports to real-time traffic speeds crowd-sourced from a community of approximately 100 million vehicles and devices. The INRIX Traffic Intelligence Platform accounts for common traffic-impacting factors, such as, day of week, season, local holidays, current and forecasted weather, accidents and road construction to help drivers save time, fuel and avoid frustration every day.¹  Real-time traffic information is updated by INRIX every minute and then analyzed and compiled into a historical database that is updated every 90 days, ensuring that Windermere Real Estate customers always have the most current insight into actual commute times.

About Windermere Real Estate:

Windermere Real Estate is ranked the largest regional real estate company in the Western U.S. with over 300 offices and 7,000 agents serving communities in Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Mexico. In 2012, Windermere closed over 65,000 transactions for more than 20 billion dollars in sales volume.

The Windermere family has a proud heritage of serving our neighbors via the Windermere Foundation which funds services for low-income and homeless families. Since 1989, the Windermere Foundation has contributed more than $25 million towards improving lives in the communities where we live and work. For more information, visit www.windermere.com.

About INRIX: INRIX® is a leading traffic intelligence platform delivering smart data and advanced analytics to solve transportation issues worldwide. INRIX crowd sources real-time data from approximately 100 million vehicles and devices to deliver traffic and driving-related insight, as well as sophisticated analytical tools and services, across five industries in 32 countries.

With more than 200 customers and partners including the BBC, Audi, ADAC, ANWB, BMW, Ford Motor Company, the I-95 Coalition, MapQuest, Microsoft, O2, Tele Atlas, Telmap, Toyota and Vodafone, INRIX's real-time traffic information and traffic forecasts help drivers save time every day.

¹ INRIX real-time traffic information has been found accurate within 3 mph of actual traffic speeds under all driving conditions 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Source: I-95 Coalition Validation of INRIX Data: Two Year Summary Report, September 2010

SOURCE INRIX