Geocodes You Can Remember And Share

Geocodes You Can Remember And Share

 October 18, 2016

One of the most aggravating things about showing real estate is not being able to locate the property. New developments that aren’t on GPS yet or rural plots of land that require knowing the local area are the most common culprits but it can happen in any location and with any property. What3Words.com can help you avoid this problem and find addresses and properties easily and with complete accuracy.

When was the last time you had multiple showings lined up for a buyer with a tight deadline? Did you get lost in an unfamiliar neighborhood? Did GPS send you to the wrong location? It’s embarrassing when it happens. Most buyers are forgiving but not all of them.

Worse, maybe you have a listing that’s hard to find or with an address that’s impossible to remember. Showings get cancelled because buyers get frustrated and give up. Your open houses are filled with nothing but nosy neighbors because no one else can figure out where to go.

What3Words is designed to make any location, anywhere on the globe, simple to find with an easy to memorize three word “address.”

What is What3Words?

What3Words has created a universal “address” system for the entire planet. The globe is broken up into a grid filled with three meter by three meter (3 m x 3 m) squares. Each one of these squares is given a three word address. Across the world, there are 57 trillion of these squares.

Instead of remembering 1234 NW 1st Street Avenue, you might only have to remember dog.cat.food or some other three word combination. While a combination of letters, numbers, and abbreviations can be difficult to remember, three words – in your native language – is something most people can memorize almost instantly.

It’s also a perfect system for finding places that don’t have an address yet like plots of land. If you know the general area or closest address, using the What3Words system, you can find the specific three word address and get to the exact location.

Easy to Understand, Easy to Use

The creators of What3Words wanted to create something easy for people to use – three simple words in your preferred language. But they also understood that human error can lead to confusion. They created a built-in error detection. Misspelled words are understood and corrected.

While some three word combinations are similar – cat.dog.food vs cats.dogs.food – anything that close in spelling will be on different continents. If you’re in the United States looking for an address and accidentally add an “s” to the end of a word, the What3Words system will realize the mistake – and so will you.

You can choose any one of nine languages for the system so if English isn’t your first language (or your customer’s and client’s), that’s okay. Currently, What3Words is available in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Swahili, Russian, German, Turkish, and Swedish. While you can choose what language you want the address displayed in, you don’t have to indicate which language you’re using. As you type, the system already knows and understands.

How Will This Work for Real Estate?

What3Words has obvious applications for any real estate business.

  • Use it to map your listings on your website, especially those hard to find properties or pieces of land.
  • Make your office easy to find with a three word address, instead of a string of numbers.
  • Keep track of addresses of properties to view and the ones they love with a simpler system (just three little words).
  • Never get lost while on a showing again. You’ll be able to help a home inspector, construction crews, repair companies, and others get to the property more quickly, too.

You can use it What3Words in two ways: install it as a plug-in on your website or install the app on your smartphone or tablet. The app works on all platforms and will even work with no data connection which is good when you’re out in the middle of a field with no official address  and spotty service.

The system isn’t just designed for real estate, and if you try it out, you may find yourself using it in other business ventures or to find new locations in your personal life. Best of all, if you love to travel, especially to remote places, you’ll never be lost, because the entire planet is mapped and given an easy to remember three word address.


Michaela Mitchell

By Michaela Mitchell

Former Communications Director for a local Realtor Association and a big cheerleader for all things real estate related, Michaela is now a full-time freelance writer specializing in real estate and other business industries. When she's not writing the serious business-y stuff, she's likely to be found writing about the hilarity of being a Mom to two rowdy boys.