By the end of this article you'll know how to draw your own search area on the map, how it works with your other filters, and how to save it.
Drawing is useful when the area you care about isn't a city or a county. It might be a corridor, a submarket, a ring around a site, or a few blocks around an intersection.
Draw a shape
On Explore, click the pencil button in the controls on the left side of the map, then choose a shape:
Draw Circle: click where you want the center, move the mouse outward until the label shows the radius you want, and click again. You can also press at the center, drag outward, and let go.
Polygon (click points): click each corner of your area, then click the first point again to close the shape.
Freehand (drag outline): hold the mouse button down, trace around the area, and let go. The shape closes itself.
When you finish, the map zooms to your shape and the results list shows only the properties inside it.
How a drawn area behaves
It fixes your search area. Results stay the same when you pan or zoom, even with Search as map moves turned on, until you clear the shape.
You can draw more than one shape. Results include properties inside any of them.
Shapes can't be edited. To change one, clear it and draw it again.
Your filters still apply. Property type, size, price, and every other filter narrow the results inside the shape.
How it combines with locations from the search bar:
A city or state stays. Results have to be inside both the shape and the city or state.
A county or region can't be combined with a shape. Drawing removes any county or region from your search, and choosing a county or region clears your shapes.
Clear a shape
Click the pencil button and choose Clear Boundaries. This removes every shape. Reset in the filter bar also clears shapes, along with your filters. So does opening a saved list.
Save a drawn area
Save Search keeps your shapes, and alerts for that search use the area you drew. Save Search needs at least one filter, such as a property type, so set one before you save. See Saved searches and email alerts.
To keep the properties themselves, click Add all above the results to save them to a list. Add all only appears when there are 2,000 results or fewer.