Windermere Real Estate and INRIX Team Up to Release Industry First: Search for Homes by Drive Time

SEATTLE, Aug. 12, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Windermere Real Estate and INRIX announced another real estate industry first: search for homes by INRIX Drive Time™, an innovative feature on Windermere.com that allows buyers to search for properties based on the drive time between work and home. The new search option provides consumers with an easy, visual means to find all homes for sale within a specific drive time between prospective properties and their work address, given typical rush hour driving conditions.

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"As the economy picks up, more people are hitting the road to go back to work," said Kevin Foreman, General Manager, GeoAnalytics, INRIX, Inc. "With traffic only getting worse, an acceptable drive time to work is moving up the list of "must-haves" for a new home."

How Search for Homes by INRIX Drive Time WORKS:

Buyers can search for homes by drive time within the 10 states where Windermere has offices: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. Buyers simply enter the maximum amount of time they're willing to spend driving between work and home, their work address, and preferred arrival time. The new search feature then automatically generates the drive time in 15-minute increments for each home.  It can also be used to calculate drive times to and from other frequented destinations that may play a role in the home search process, such as schools.

"We believe Windermere's new 'Search by INRIX Drive Time' is going to revolutionize how buyers search for homes online – especially in high-traffic, metropolitan areas," said OB Jacobi, president of Windermere Real Estate. "We already know that commuting is a critical factor for 73 percent of buyers, and now they can filter their search results based upon drive time criteria, just as they do for price, number of bedrooms, and other important attributes."

In March, Windermere launched phase one of INRIX Drive Time by attaching a drive time calculator to every home for sale on Windermere.com. Since March, it has been used by consumers more than 50,000 times. Today's launch takes this capability even further by enabling buyers to use drive time to define their search criteria alongside price, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, etc.

"The new drive time search capability on Windermere.com is a natural evolution for the INRIX Drive Time feature," said Foreman. "Not only does INRIX's technology help people make the right decision on their new home, it does that in an intuitive and customized way.  For the first time, accurate drive time information sourced from actual drivers can be used as initial search criteria by consumers and agents – significantly enhancing the home search process on Windermere.com."

How INRIX Drive Time is CALCULATED:

INRIX Drive Time is powered by traffic information sourced from the INRIX Traffic Intelligence Platform, which analyzes billions of real-time data points from a unique combination of sources ranging from road sensors to real-time traffic speeds crowd-sourced from the company's own network of millions of vehicles and devices.

INRIX also 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 analysed and compiled into a historical database that is updated on a regular basis, ensuring that Windermere Real Estate customers always have the most current insight into actual drive 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 one of the fastest growing big data technology companies in the world. The company leverages big data analytics to reduce the individual, economic and environmental toll of traffic congestion. Through cutting-edge data intelligence and predictive traffic technologies, INRIX helps leading automakers, fleets, governments and news organizations make it easier for drivers to navigate their world. Our vision is simple – to solve traffic, empower drivers, inform planning and enhance commerce. 

Whether through an in-car or smartphone navigation application, a local newscast or our INRIX Traffic app, our up-to-the-minute traffic information and other driver services reach more than 150 million drivers to help them save time, fuel and frustration. INRIX delivers traffic and driving-related insight, as well as sophisticated analytical tools and services across six industries covering over two million miles of road in 32 countries. For more information visit us at www.INRIX.com.

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