Lifestyle search is an enhanced type of property search that lets users find homes for sale based on criteria that goes well beyond the typical price and location filters. Online home shoppers can fine-tune their search by looking for properties based on school attendance zones, proximity to attractions, commute time, and more.

This benefits brokers and MLSs by improving user experience on their consumer-facing websites. It also benefits property searchers, who can more easily and enjoyably find the right property.

To help you learn more about lifestyle search, we recommend reading the following articles. They're a good place to get started:

• Match Your Online Presence to Your Offline Personality
• School Attendance Zones: Do You Know Where Your Children Are?
• The Data Deal: Point of Interest Edition

Choosing the Right Tool

If you're in the market for a lifestyle search solution, there are questions you can ask to evaluate which option is right for you, like:

• Will this solution be able to access MLS data? Where does the data come from?
• How difficult will this solution be to add to my website?
• Will the listing display and lifestyle information conform to MLS rules and regulations for IDX and VOW websites?
• Is the vendor using the free version of the mapping software or are they using an enterprise license? (FYI – Google Maps comes in both a free and enterprise version; the free version does not have update support, among other things.)
• Will visitors stay on my website when using this solution or will they be sent to an external site?
  

Find more questions to ask in our 2014 Technology Guide. It's a free resource for real estate pros who want to learn more about the technology products available to them.

Here is one lifestyle search solution highlighted in the Tech Guide:

• Onboard Informatics: This tool allows visitors to your website to search for a home based on the things that really matter to them (schools, recreational activities, transportation, and more). The solution can be layered over existing IDX search or paired with Onboard's Listings Search Engine and is hosted on Onboard's secure servers.

For more information on the option above, download the full guide. For a full list of Lifestyle Search solutions, visit our Product Directory.

More in the "Tech 101" Series

This is the latest in a series of articles that explores the spectrum of technology products available to real estate professionals. Each post covers what a specific type of technology does, how to evaluate solutions in that category, and available options. Here's what we've covered so far:

• CMAs
• Back office solutions
• Online Marketing
• Electronic Signatures
• Real Estate Websites
• Document and Transaction Management
• Virtual Office Websites
• Lead Generation
• Lifestyle Search
• Lockboxes
• Mobile Apps
  
• Website Analytics
• Market Analytics

Stay tuned for more!