PropertyShark.com - Product News

PropertyShark.com and Toxics Targeting Partner to Provide New Environmental Information Service

Wednesday, March 1st, 2006

New York City, March 1, 2006 – PropertyShark.com and Toxics Targeting today posted a detailed Internet map that illustrates more than 12,000 toxic dumps, leaking tanks and pollution discharges throughout New York’s five boroughs. Real estate buyers can screen individual parcels for selected toxic sites that can reduce property value, impose clean up liability, or restrict property use. View map at: http://www.propertyshark.com/maps/?map=nyc2&basemap=toxicsites

Ryan Slack, PropertyShark.com’s chief executive officer, said “Purchasers of contaminated property can be held liable for costly clean ups so they should always conduct due diligence for environmental hazards. Prospective real estate investors will find this easy-to-use toxic site map invaluable.

Toxics Targeting used the City’s tax parcel map to locate toxic sites reported by local, state, and federal authorities. “This is the most detailed toxic site map ever made publicly available for New York City,” said Walter Hang, Toxics Targeting’s president. “Real estate investors can zoom in on individual parcels to see selected toxic sites,” Hang noted.

Toxics Targeting provides a report service that maps and profiles up to 19 toxic site categories on or around any specific address ($150.00 each). Prospective buyers can use the reports to conduct property due diligence or Phase I environmental site assessments required by mortgage lenders.

Toxics Targeting Reports can be ordered on PropertyShark.com’s web site and are emailed for fast turn-around to meet closing deadlines. Purchasers can call 800-2-TOXICS to ask report questions.

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Toxics Targeting specializes in mapping and profiling nearly 1.0 million toxic sites across New York State and New Jersey. It provides environmental database reports to property buyers, engineers, consultants, attorneys, drinking water suppliers, and municipalities.

With over 20 million properties in twenty major markets, PropertyShark.com provides real estate professionals and investors with data and tools on all aspects of property, including building details, ownership information, recent sales prices, property tax, sophisticated maps, apartments for sale, foreclosures and pre-foreclosures, mailing lists, photos, and more, available directly from the web. PropertyShark.com strives to level the playing field by offering independent real estate firms, investors, and savvy consumers the information transparency essential to evaluate real estate and make informed decisions. For more information go to: www.propertyshark.com

PropertyShark.com Plots Home Sale Prices on Maps to Empower Brokers

Tuesday, February 7th, 2006

New York City, February 7, 2006 – PropertyShark.com announces its home sale-price maps to empower appraisers and real estate professionals to effectively serve home buyers and sellers.

Launched as a beta, an example of this map for New York City can be seen here: http://www.propertyshark.com/maps/sales/

“We’ve decided to launch this on the eve of the launch of residential home valuation tool Zillow because, in my opinion, computer-based automated valuations, such as those you will likely see at Zillow, are more likely to be wrong than right. Every property is an illiquid, unique asset, and a computer program cannot accurately predict the price it will fetch on the market,” commented PropertyShark.com founder, Matthew Haines.

PropertyShark.com, which is designed primarily for use by appraisers and real estate professionals, provides users with the original data directly from government records, including sales price, mortgage amounts, document images, and ownership records.

“My understanding is that Zillow is out to disintermediate the broker and real estate salesperson, attempting to devalue the broker’s Comparable Market Analysis by providing an instant valuation of sorts. Unlike Zillow, PropertyShark.com is focused on empowering real estate professionals, not disempowering them. We give professionals, and savvy consumers, the actual raw data, as well as an unprecedented level of depth which captures the unique nature of each piece of real estate and its value,” expanded PropertyShark.com chief executive officer, Ryan Slack.

With over 20 million properties in twenty major markets, PropertyShark.com provides real estate professionals and investors with data and tools on all aspects of property, including building details, ownership information, recent sales prices, property tax, sophisticated maps, apartments for sale, foreclosures and pre-foreclosures, mailing lists, photos, and more, available directly from the web. PropertyShark.com strives to level the playing field by offering independent real estate firms, investors, and savvy consumers the information transparency essential to evaluate real estate and make informed decisions. For more information go to: www.propertyshark.com

PropertyShark.com Photographs Every Building in Manhattan

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006

New York City, January 3, 2006 – PropertyShark.com, a data analytical tool for property search, just announced they have taken a picture of every building in Manhattan—over 40,000 in total.

“We’ve indexed each photo to an actual building,” explains Matthew Haines, founder, PropertyShark.com. “Each photo has been taken by hand, by our team of extraordinary photographers, with high-quality digital cameras equipped with wide angle lenses to capture entire buildings and portions of neighboring properties,” continues Haines. “These photographers have quite a few stories to tell about all they’ve encountered in their mission to complete this project.

“When we first came up with the idea to do this project, we tried to fashion a much more high-tech way of taking pictures, but eventually went back to the most effective method—taking pictures of each building on foot, walking nearly 1000 miles in total,” comments Ryan Slack, chief executive officer, PropertyShark.com

“While this started out as a practical addition to our site, useful for professionals and consumers alike, as we began to work through the project, in addition to its business uses, it became a conceptual art project with sociological value,” declares Haines.

“Both Ryan and I moved to New York City from California and we came to love the gritty, big city feel—we wanted to capture the overwhelming size of it. We saw that New York City was undergoing a huge boom in new construction, and we knew that five years from now the city we had come to love would no longer be the city newcomers would see. We wanted to capture all the parts just as they are,” continues Haines, quick to note that these are not glamorous architectural shots, but rather everyday photos.

“No other company out there has done this,” proclaims Slack. “MSN, Google, Yahoo and Amazon’s A9.com are all attempting to do similar photo projects in Manhattan, yet none of these players have achieved what we have,” Slack elaborates proudly. “A9, which is farthest along, only shows the first two stories of each building, while PropertyShark.com offers a full picture of the entire façade; in addition, we provide shots of every building on every street, whereas they only have certain commercial streets available. We also link every photo to a specific building address, but A9’s photos are not indexed to specific addresses only general locations.”

In addition to displaying the pictures in the PropertyShark.com’s property reports, the photos are also incorporated into the site’s maps, showing exactly where the building is located.

“A9’s photos are displayed by showing all streets as East-West, which can make it difficult to know what building you are seeing or even what side of the street you are viewing,” adds Haines.

The photos can be used for a wide variety of purposes:

  • Researching buildings for sale
  • Checking out apartments
  • Scouting a neighborhood or location
  • Perusing a commercial district—viewing the exterior of a restaurant, bar or shop
  • Combining them with state-of-the-art interactive PropertyShark.com maps to quickly search to locate properties/locations

PropertyShark.com’s photographers will not get to rest for long. The company plans to continue until all of NYC is photographed.

With over 20 million properties in twenty major markets, PropertyShark.com provides real estate professionals and investors with data and tools on all aspects of property, including building details, ownership information, recent sales prices, property tax, sophisticated maps, apartments for sale, foreclosures and pre-foreclosures, mailing lists, photos, and more, available directly from the web. PropertyShark.com strives to level the playing field by offering independent real estate firms, investors, and savvy consumers the information transparency essential to evaluate real estate and make informed decisions. For more information go to: www.propertyshark.com

PropertyShark.com Adds New Mapping Features

Tuesday, October 18th, 2005

New York City, October 18, 2005 – PropertyShark.com, a data analytical tool for property search, recently launched version 2.0 of its highly interactive maps to further improve their mapping product offering.

Says PropertyShark.com founder, Matthew Haines, “Real estate is location-specific and our goal was to make specialized maps for NYC that incorporate local information that is rich enough to make Google look bland and generic.”

“As a result of recent weather calamities and interest in Katrina, we worked quickly to add a FEMA flood zone overlay,” adds Ryan Slack, chief executive officer of PropertyShark.com.

In PropertyShark.com’s efforts to continually provide relevant and desired data for NYC, in addition to a FEMA flood zone overlay, v2.0 adds new data, including:

  • Subways
  • Borough and community district outlines
  • Outlines of each individual lot on a block
  • Outlines of actual buildings
  • Detail inside of parks such as ponds, creeks, walkways and park buildings
  • Landmark and historic district overlay
  • A special building class theme showing how each building or lot is used (different colors show residential, stores, churches, industrial, government, vacancies, etc.)

With over 20 million properties in twenty major markets, PropertyShark.com provides real estate professionals and investors with data and tools on all aspects of property, including building details, ownership information, recent sales prices, property tax, sophisticated maps, apartments for sale, foreclosures and pre-foreclosures, mailing lists, photos, and more, available directly from the web. PropertyShark.com strives to level the playing field by offering independent real estate firms, investors, and savvy consumers the information transparency essential to evaluate real estate and make informed decisions. For more information go to: www.propertyshark.com