Zillow Launches Search by School Feature

The U.S. real estate portal Zillow has announced that it is launching a feature that will allow users to search for a new home by specific school attendance zones or districts.

The new feature (pictured below) runs from the main search bar and is currently available on the portal's iOS app with the Android version expected to be launched by the end of the year and a desktop version slated for next year.

"Nearly one-third of home shoppers have children younger than 18, making 'search by school' an important feature on the Zillow app," said Nicholas Stevens, vice president of product at Zillow. "We understand the perfect home often extends beyond the property itself, and this feature makes it easy for shoppers to explore homes for sale or for rent in their desired school districts."

The introduction of the tool comes at a time when real estate marketplaces are slowly starting to realise that users often need to search by relative distance (or indeed time) from specific points of interest rather than the town or neighbourhood meta-data that has historically been the default search jump-off point.

Attendees of Property Portal Watch in Madrid last week heard how British portal Zoopla is integrating the services of TravelTime to let its users search for a home by the time it would take them to reach a certain location such as a workplace or school.

Zillow is somewhat late to the party with rivals Realtor.com, Redfin and even its sister site, Trulia having already introduced a school-based search feature.