Hacker News Reader

Comment by bobbles | Hacker News Reader

Offtopic, but I don't suppose you could provide any insight into why real estate websites ask for search filters and then completely ignore them?

(eg. if i search for a max limit of $750K, top page of results will all be offer 800k+ sites? - Why let me set a max then ignore it?)

View on HN

As someone who has built many real estate sites, this is done on purpose as a "fuzzy-logic" search as agents feel anyone willing to spend $750k for a home can be easily induced to spend 5-10% more if the right property catches their fancy.

So, they have zero respect for their users' intelligence or preferences.

If I have wiggle room, I make my max inclusive of the "x% more if it catches my fancy". It's unintuitive to search for "max $680k" to ensure results are within a $750k budget. As someone who uses real estate sites, this is enough friction to send me elsewhere, where, as tamana says, my preferences and ability are respected. Why not add a slider bar for "perfect place" wiggle room amount/percentage, with a 10% default, but which the user can set to zero?

Exactly, and the next problem is that it seems like EVERY real estate site does this. I have not found a SINGLE site in Australia to look for rent OR buy real estate, that actually filters based on what I enter. They are all useless

I like this a lot, and will do my best to convince my agents to allow me to implement this idea...

Thanks! I very much look forward to seeing this out in the wild.

Yeah but what this actually does is "great, since they competency ignored my search criteria, I will no longer use this search"

I know what my budget is - I'm not going to search for 10% under that in the hopes that the fuzzy logic brings up exactly what im looking for

Reply on news.ycombinator.com