It’s ridiculous how finding a new place to live can be the most difficult part of house buying. Even long chains being broken by unreliable buyers, last minute drywall rot checks… these hazards are nothing on your significant other saying ‘oh, I didn’t realise that we were going to be so close to a school’.
You can scout at the right times all you want, scope out rush hour and even hang out in a local pub garden observing the regularity of overhead flight traffic. But that one niggling aspect of your new environment, how do you account for that?
Well you’re in luck. Mapwards allows you to be incredibly nitpicky with your search. Don’t you just love what we can do with data? Don’t be put off by the detailed map either, it’s the best design choice for an app that is so simple to use, yet still a very powerful tool. Let’s take a look at how it works:
So I’m looking for something in Central London. Here I set a 2km radius on my map search.
What criterion do I think are important for my new dwelling?
I want a butcher shop nearby as I like to buy ethically produced meat but like many people, won’t always go the extra mile to avoid meat sold in supermarkets when doing my weekly grocery shop.
I hate fire engines. That ridiculous nee naw, nee naw… and if you’re ever in London, while you grow accustomed to the sirens, these fire engines are just so big and raucous. Get those red noise machines far away from me, no closer than 300m to my new home.
A garden centre within 200m would be nice and I don’t have a car so would need to be able to clean my clothes at a location within walking distance. Let’s see how this goes.
Manage Criteria
Butcher (within 100 m)
Fire Station (at least 300 m away)
Garden Centre (within 200 m)
Laundry (within 100 m)
START
There we have it. Unfortunately no garden centre and perhaps that was a bit optimistic, but good that it still showed me literally the only location for my other key aspects. I have my butchers and the choice of three places to clean my clothes. Not a fire station in sight either. Beautiful.
Okay, but I’m not rich enough to live here. This spot is right next to Westminster School which is the home of future politicians and financiers. Let’s try a wider map search with some of my more inexcusable desires.
Mapwards lets you be unbelievably specific
I always loved the film Notting Hill starring Hugh Grant, who owns a bookshop there. Would be nice to create my own storyline by becoming a regular character at my very own local.
My partner has a theory that mobile shops are sketchy. No location analysis informs her logic here whatsoever. She just thinks the further away we can get, the more intrinsically classy our area will be. Let’s go at least 250m away from any of these.
Also danish pastries are, in my opinion, the most probable cause of Denmark’s ridiculously high standard of living so we need a bakery basically on our doorstep.
There we go, about a dozen candidate locations. But what if I need regular visits to the doctor’s and, god forbid, my mobility isn’t that great?
Still several options when I need a doctor’s within 100m and a few of them even in locations where I won’t be paying ludicrous sums (at least for London). This is actually quite a spectacular result.
Now some of this map search may seem arbitrary – it may be wishful thinking that, like Hugh Grant, a bookshop would help Julia Roberts fall in love with me – but location analysis on Mapwards can help you with everything from planning holidays to finding a suitable place for new offices.
The beautiful thing about data-driven apps such as this is that its potential is only limited by your creativity in combining data points. It’s a strong tool that works worldwide and can place you near to playgrounds, police stations, vets and numerous other places of interest.
Choosing a new place to live often involves a lot of random pin-dropping on a map and only then seeing if it’s right for you. Reverse the process and you have Mapwards, where you can narrow a potential location down to what matters before you’ve even started looking.
