Windermere Real Estate, has had phenomenal growth across the Northwest and now into the Southwest and California. Named after an upscale neighborhood in the Seattle area, it’s made a commitment to community involvement and has managed to maintain an excellent local reputation. By sponsorship of the annual Windermere Cup crew races, they’ve cultivated a slightly upper-crust brand that seems to work well for their client base.

Up until a few months ago, their website was always a bit faster, a bit sleeker than their competitors, their ads were often nicer (or at least had a better graphic design on the pages of the Seattle Times) and their numerous offices always seemed a bit better decorated than their competitors.

John L. Scott added Virtual Earth technology first, then Coldwell Banker Bain followed suit. The new map and website features for Windermere has been anticipated for several months.

Now comes the news that Windermere will be providing continuous feeds of all their listings directly through Google Base, and the new site will feature Google Maps and super-size photos.

In the past, one of the things that set Windermere apart was their refusal to share their listings with Realtor.com. Their choice resulted in a non-dilution of their carefully designed brand and it made their own website only stronger.

It seems that this choice to provide a feed to Google Base has taken their company in a radically different direction. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall at that board meeting.

** UPDATE **

Tim O’Keefe at the Real Estate Marketing Blog reports that ERA Real Estate has agreed to feed as a test about 76,000 ERA represented property listings with Trulia Real Estate Search Engine.

Lots of interesting changes and business partnerships emerging lately. I wonder how many more opportunities are still available. I checked MSN and AOL, and they’re both already hooked up with Realtor.com. Prudential has a deal with Yahoo. Seattle’s Real Property Associates is running a feed directly to Trulia (I like watching what they’re doing, as co-owner Gordon Stephenson is on the Board of Directors at Zillow.) I don’t see any reason why our other two local players, John L. Scott and Coldwell Banker Bain couldn’t also run feeds to Google Base and Trulia, but they may have their own reasons not too….