Update on Community Explorer
Category: Active adult communities
December 9, 2023 — Many thanks to our loyal visitors and Members who took the time to check out our new Community Explorer. Your comments and observations have been very helpful in tweaking it before we go live with it next week. Here is an update on what we have found so far.
Some lifestyles are better found through the Amenities filter. Communities that fit Golf and Boating lifestyles, for example, are more easily found through the Amenities filter than the Lifestyle filter. So, to avoid disappointing results, we deleted those two choices from the Lifestyle filter. Using the Amenities filter will help you discover communities with marinas. Or, use it to identify developments that have 9 or 18 hole golf courses, pro shops, putting greens, practice facilities etc.
Keep your filters when checking out communities in different states. Lets say you chose 3 Amenities filters when looking in Florida. If you switch to another state, the Explorer will keep those same filters for your comparison.
Use as many filters as you want – but know they return an “and” command. One tester reported she wasn’t getting enough results, probably because she chose too many filters. Every time you add a filter it is now an “and” command – the community, for example, must have a swimming pool and a locker room to be selected.
You found a bug. Another tester found a bug for us when he didn’t like the results. We looked into that and found, then corrected, a bug that was behind his poor search results. Thanks for finding that!
This is not the Retirement Ranger. Many users are lobbying for the return of our popular Retirement Ranger. The Ranger was more useful for finding towns than the Explorer, which is much better at finding communities. Unfortunately it will be quite and expensive project to bring the Ranger back on our new site. But we are continuing to search for an economical way to resuscitate it in the future.
Again, thanks to all for your continued testing. Let us know your Comments. It will be in the main navigation as an option in the next few days.
Comments on "Update on Community Explorer"
Admin says:
Hi folks, continuing to make progress on the Explorer thanks to your suggestions. A big one - it turns out we were not including our extensive data on communities with biking or hiking trails. You can now select that option in Amenities and you will see a ton of communities that have them. Another bug - many communities were not showing the correct pricing option (lower, intermediate, or Luxury). While still not perfect due to original input errors, most show the correct answer. Thank you all.
Admin says:
We will be publishing an article reviewing what the most popular searches are in the Explorer soon. The Explorer is live now, you can find the link to it in the site's main navigation. Tip: Your searches are preserved if you switch states. So, for example, if you are searching for Amenities like trails, fitness centers, and marinas, all of those remain checked if you look for results in another state.