Uniformity in a world which isn't

The conventional system shows its regional roots. The next version must not.

It's the assumptions we don't realize we're making which cause us the most frustration and/or embarrassment later. For example, asking Floridians about basements or heated area. Or, with nuanced meanings still not completely evident to us, agents in Southern California complaining that the product is so obviously East Coast.

From the framework stage onward, the mindset must be that of a universal product in a non-universal world. We mustn't make the mistake of aiming at being a national product. Before this next version becomes outdated, possibly even before it debuts, we could well be at least in Canada/Mexico, if not scattered all across the planet.

In California, a home is considered old when it was built more than 20 years ago. In England, a home is considered new if it's less than 400 years old. In central Australia, underground houses are the norm. In Saskatchewan, exterior doors on the second floor are commonplace so residents can exit the house during winter. In Hawaii, external doors are optional. And in Europe, what we call the second floor is what they call the first floor.

No aspect of a listed property should be presumed to be universally consistent, yet we must present a consistent face in every market.

A user on Long Island must be able to hit the ground running when he's given a login to London. The word "Tube" should appear in place of "Subway" but the importance of a listing's distance from the nearest station is equal in both places. In Fort Lauderdale, the notion should be rephrased in terms of miles from I-95. In Marathon, Florida, it should be rephrased in terms of feet from US-1. And in the Bahamas it should be rephrased in terms of frequency of the island ferries.

The next version must be multi-lingual. Not even a single character of user-readable text must be held in the source code. It must all be held in database tables which are indexed by language. The same holds true for every graphic to be displayed on the website. Icons don't mean the same thing in every culture. A hand touching the tip of the index finger to the tip of the thumb means "okay" in North America, but it means something alimentary in most of the rest of the world. A red octagon means "Stop" only to people whose streets are governed by such signs.

Finally, the Accounting system must be multi-currency. From inception, it must be able to capture the amount of a transaction both in terms of presented currency and in terms of home currency. That is, when a citizen of Canada purchases a house on Long Island, we need to record as of the moment of Closing that the amount was both C$924,048 paid and US$751,366 received.