Most people’s must-have housing criteria is not “I want to live in an urban hellscape, many miles from the nearest tree.” What we actually want is a park for a quick walk. A playground to entertain the kids while we doomscroll. An allotment to grow tomatoes in and get into low-level neighbourly beef with a nosy OAP called Brenda.
That’s why, as part of our Neighbourhood Features launch, we made greenspace properly searchable on Jitty. Not just whether there’s a park vaguely nearby, but how long it actually takes to get there, in real minutes, on foot, by bike or by public transport.
Distance Lies
People don’t think in metres. They think in minutes.
Is it a five-minute walk? Can I get there easily with a buggy? Is it close enough to use regularly, not just occasionally?
A park 500 metres away can still be awkward to reach. On a map it looks close, in reality it might not be.
What matters isn’t just that there is greenspace, but how long it takes to get there from your front door.
Why We Built It This Way
Most property sites have a map widget you can expand to see whether there’s greenspace nearby.
That’s useful context, but it isn’t searchable. Greenspace is something you check manually once you’ve already clicked into a listing, not something you can use to shape results upfront.
We wanted to bring it into search itself. And once you do that, we also wanted you to understand how far it was in a real, everyday sense.
What Makes That Possible
Jitty’s search is built to treat travel time as data, not just something you look up on a map.
Working with TravelTime, we calculate realistic travel times for walking, cycling, and public transport. We index those times using a hexagonal grid, so each area already knows what’s reachable within a given number of minutes.
That means travel time can be combined directly with other filters — price, bedrooms, neighbourhood features — instead of being something you check afterwards.
All of this is built on OS Open Greenspace, which maps publicly accessible greenspaces across the UK — from parks and playgrounds to sports facilities and allotments.
We’re combining accurate mapping with travel-time data to reflect how people actually move through places.
What You Can Search For
You can now filter homes based on both the type of greenspace nearby and how long it takes to get there.
That includes things like parks and open green areas, playgrounds, sports fields and facilities, tennis courts and golf courses, and allotments and bowling greens.
Part of a Bigger Shift
Nearby Greenspaces is one of our Neighbourhood Features, focused on making the lived experience around a home searchable.
We already understand homes in detail. We already let buyers search in natural language. Now search also reflects the practical realities of living somewhere, not just what appears on a listing.
Greenspace stops being something you notice on a map and becomes something you can actually search for.
Questions You Might Have
Head down a different street...
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