Dear users, we will be taking the system down today at midnight for some necessary updates and system maintenance for 2 – 3 hours.  We apologize for any inconvenience.

Dear users, we added a new template based on your request for something that’s simple and clean, similar to Postlets.

We have completely re-designed and improved our old Showing Sheets feature.  These improvements should make the old Showing Sheets feature easier to understand and use.  Here are the highlights of the changes:

1.  Showing Sheets is renamed to Listing Groups.  The old showing sheet was really just a group of listings, and as we offered more features, we started to use it for other purposes, like Facebook and PennyPosting.  Therefore, we decided to rename it to what it actually is, a group of listings, hence Listing Groups.

2.  Showing sheet is no longer automatically created when a new lead is created.  The YGL system was automatically creating showing sheets for new leads.  This cluttered the system with many unwanted showing sheets.  Now, you can still add listings to a lead, but a showing sheet (listing group) is no longer created.

3.  Add / Remove all current page results to / from the listing group with one click.  Before, you had to click each listing to add it to a showing sheet (listing group), there was no easy way to add all the search results into a group.  Now you can!

4.  Share a PUBLIC listing group with other users in your office.    Many of you have asked for the ability to create a public showing sheet for your agency.  You can now do that.  This will make it easier for you to group listings and share them with the whole office, such as hot properties, featured properties, etc.

We added our first new template that showcases your profile photo.  The template orange/brown theme was based on a website that we really liked, and the template was also named based on that website.

If you haven’t uploaded your photo yet, it would be a good idea to do so now.

We are working a Postlet styled template as well, it should be available soon.  Any feedback is appreciated.

We added a new convenience feature to automatically populate the address neighborhood field when it is not entered.  We did this through similar mechanics as the auto POI tagging.  We obtained the neighborhood border information through the follow websites:

Boston Zoning Info

Cambridge Geographic Information System

Here is the map we constructed in Google Maps.  Please have a look if you are interested and give us some suggestions.  Thanks!

Boston Neighborhoods

Cambridge Neighborhoods

Some of you have asked for more posting options, particularly the ability to post to Backpage and Kajiji.  We always value your feedback, and we just added the ability for you to post to Backpage.com.  You’ll notice that the ad posting page has changed slightly.  You now have an extra radio button to select posting to Craigslist or Backpage.  See screenshot below for more information.

Let us know how it works out for you guys.  Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Many of you have asked us to see if we can create a tool to make it easier for you to post to Facebook Marketplace.  Facebook has recently re-designed their Marketplace.  The new Marketplace incorporates some very cool social features that has never been seen on a real estate classifieds.  We are actively looking into it and we will get back to you guys as soon as we get some answers.

If you are actively sharing listings on your Facebook feeds, you should probably look into posting to Marketplace instead.  The reason is that if you keep sharing things that your friends do not care about, they will hide you from their feeds very quickly.  If you get blocked, it’ll prevent you from sharing anything later that might actually be of interest to them.  Use the sharing feature sparsely and carefully.

We have re-designed the showing sheet page to be clearer and more functional.  A few things to pay attention to:

1.  Added a public url for you to share your listings selection with the public.

2.  Added/updated options to easily display related information such as public notes and map snippets.

We are looking into redesign the showing sheet feature completely in the near future, and potentially call it Listing Groups.  You feedback would be appreciated.

Tags Management Redesign

First, the old tags management interface was not very well formatted, making it hard for you to find the tag you are looking for.  We have redesigned the page to make it clearer and easier to see.  See screen shot below.  The tags management interface is used to manage your existing listing and building features, tags and POI.

New Powerful Feature – POI Auto Tagging

We are proud to release a very powerful new feature to help you save time on your data entry, and more importantly help you maintain better quality listings data.  The quality of your listings data is very important in many aspects, such as better connection with clients, search engine optimization, more exposure on partner sites, etc.

The new POI Auto Tagging feature allows you to mark an POI and its covering area on a map.  Any listings / buildings that are in the selected area will then be automatically tagged with the matching POI name.  For example, you can select a big areas covering Boston University, and all your existing listings, and all future listings within the Boston University POI area will be automatically tagged with the Boston University POI.

You can get to the POI Management page through the Manage Tags link from the Dashboard.  Once inside the Manage Tags page, scroll down to the POI section, and follow the Manage Automated POI Tagging link.

Manage Automated POI Tagging

Manage Automated POI Tagging link on Manage Tags page

Manage Automated POI Tagging Page

Why is this useful?

Aside from the benefits outlined above.  There can be some very innovative uses for this new feature, especially combined with an external website.  For example, you can create an auto POI for each Green T line stop.  Then when you or your clients search for the POI Green T line, all the apartments along the Green T line will show up.

In the future, we are looking to categorize your auto POIs to make it even more powerful.  Then you will be able to group related POIs together like Transportation and Colleges.

Dear users, we have made another important update based on your feedback. For a while now, some of you have asked to be able to show the apartments with photos first on your agency website and personal website.  This was not possible until today because it made the search too slow.

We made an important update last night to be able to accomplish this.  Now if you check out your personal website or your agency website, you’ll find that your apartments with photos are displayed on the top.  This improvement will make your website look more attractive to perspective clients.

Stay tuned, we have more goodies coming.