What property recession? Nestoria launches WhereCanILive mashup

We’re in an official recession. The property market has slumped. But who cares? Property search startup Nestoria remains busy. It’s just set up a white-label version of its service for AOL, following on from similar such deals with The Daily Telegraph and the Independent newspapers. The site is for users on AOL.co.uk and the Homes and Property Channel. Meanwhile it’s launched a brand new mashup using it’s data.

Where Can I Live uses the Nestoria database to help home hunters find their properties based on commuting times to their place of work in London. The user determines which Underground or DLR station is near his/her workplace and the budget to buy or rent. Tthe Where-Can-I-Live engine then finds properties on the market ranked by price and commuting time. Travel time is calculated only between stations, so the users need to add walking time to and from stations (apparently walking distance is inversely proportional to the renting value of many properties in London). The open-source OpenStreetMap is used as the base map, and it’s a lot more impressive than I thought it would be.

Where Can I Live is based on a tool originally developed by Christopher Osborne as part of his Masters project at UCL which he did with Nestoria. The site was created and launched as part of Nestoria’s Lokku Labs and realised by Doodledo.

Nestoria is, as I say, keeping busy, despite the doom and gloom in the property market. It’s also partnering with UK property portal Country Life and has whipped up Nestoholic.com, a house prices comparison site by location and area in the UK.

However, Where Can I Live is useless for people who live in London but want to live near an over-ground rail-line, not an Underground line. It also doesn’t cover bus routes, which are increasingly important in congestion-charge London (bus times have increased).

Nestoria remains “privately backed” but faces plenty of competition not least from Zoopla which now has £3.75m in funding to play with. That, and another player I am hearing about which is poised to bring yet another new model to market, so watch this space. Interesting times…