You may recall that I wrote a couple posts about CyberHomesPro in the past.  I was on RealTalk today and noticed that Reggie Nicolay from CyberHomes had resurrected one of my earlier posts on that forum to suggest that we take another look at the CyberHomesPro Smartframe.

So, I did.  I found that the changes that have been made make the SmartFrame a good way for you to provide home evaluation information and neighborhood data on your website and/or blog.  For an example, take a look at this test page.

I set up the test using “Atlanta” as the area of interest.  You can also narrow things down by setting up the SmartFrame for a specific zip code.

When you first reach the page, you’ll see quite a few homes in the Atlanta area.  If you want to test it out, try typing in the address:  356 King Rd NW, Atlanta, GA.  I’m  not sure that address even exists, but it will give you a chance to see how things work.

Once you type that address, and click Search, you will see some other homes on that street with descriptions.  Using that function, you can get an idea of prices in an area, even if your specific address is not in the database.  If you use one of the existing addresses that are shown, you’ll see a range for the estimated value.  I think that makes much more sense than those sites that claim to have a valid estimate. 

If you use that address and change the drop down to the left of the search box to Neighborhoods, you’ll find that CyberHomes has figured out the address is in the 30342 zip code, and it displays neighborhood information for that zip code.

There’s a lot of neighborhood information:

• 12-month change in home values
• median sales prices and volume
• sales tax
• cost of living index
• recent and projected job growth
• crime statistics
• climate averages

And, I could go on – but you should really take a look at it yourself.

I set the frame up to scroll, although that is not the default.  I did that because some of the pages a visitor might end up on are longer than the norm, and without the scroll, they’d have no way to see all of the page.  But, the most commonly used pages can be seen without an interior scroll bar, so I don’t mind the scrolling issue too much.

You do need to set the width of the frame at 1000px or the page will be cut off.  For most sites with vertical navigation bars, that means you’ll need to eliminate the nav bar as I did on the test page.

I’ll update this post if I get an answer to the question I asked about what happens if someone creates an account on your SmartFrame.  I’m not sure how the information will be used at this point.  Update:  See the Comments on this post to see the answer to this question from Reggie at Cyberhomes!

But, given the fact that the last time I looked at the SmartFrame it was unusable for most people, I’m very glad to see that this version provides a great deal of information in a very usable form!