Patent ID: 8095434

Claim:
A method in a computing system having a processor for displaying information about homes, comprising: causing to be displayed to a user a control for selecting a geographic area; causing to be displayed to the user a control for selecting home attribute values of at least one home attribute; in response to the selection of a geographic area and home attribute values using the displayed controls: obtaining a map of the selected geographic area; among a plurality of summarization levels each corresponding to a different region type, selecting a summarization level best-suited to the selected geographic area; with the processor, identifying a plurality of regions of the region type to which the selected summarization level corresponds that intersect the selected geographic area; for each of the identified regions: with the processor, identifying a plurality of homes that each have the selected home attribute values and that are each within the identified region; with the processor, for a distinguished home attribute, aggregating across the identified homes the values for the identified homes of the distinguished home attribute to obtain an aggregated home attribute value that describes the identified homes without expressly specifying the value of the distinguished home attribute for each of the identified homes; annotating the identified region in the obtained map with the aggregated home attribute value; and causing the map in which each of the identified regions is annotated to be displayed to the user.