Location, location, location
Derrick Penner
Sun
Search tools like zoocasa.com (above) finds property listings based on a buyer’s criteria, then locates them in the neighbourhood and provides comparable sales data. Photograph by: zoocasa.com
With new research-based search tools cropping up all the time, the Internet is no longer just a place for house hunters to find property listings.
Their search tools will show you amenities in the neighbourhoods you are looking at, where the schools are and in the City of Vancouver, even who your neighbours might be.
Web-savvy Vancouver realtor Kye Grace, with Sutton West Coast Vancouver, has dug up some tools that are rich with information consumers can use to help figure out where they want to live before heading out to look at homes.
With Metro Vancouver real estate prices and interest rates falling, more new — and tech-friendly — buyers are interested in exploring the market.
“Where online searches work well is, they can hyper-focus your search,” Grace said.
Grace, who conducts all of his marketing online and is an advocate of social media, including the new networking phenomenon Twitter, points to a few websites.
Zoocasa (www.zoocasa.com) is a good place to place to start. It finds lists of properties for sale that meet a consumer’s search criteria for locations in major Canadian cities.
Links from those listings locate the homes within a neighbourhood and point out schools.
“What I think is neat, if you click on ‘more details,’ [Zoocasa] will show you schools, it will show you recent sales that are somewhat comparable,” Grace said.
For those focused on Vancouver, Grace suggests the site Blocktalk (www.blocktalk.ca), which is a good spot for consumers to start gathering information about neighbourhoods they’re not familiar with.
Blocktalk will, by neighbourhood, locate an address on a map and give you an indication of who your neighbours would be.
Type an address into the search field, or click on a locator map, Blocktalk will build a detailed neighbourhood profile of the people who live there from age and income to ethnic origin using census information.
“It gives you an idea who you would be living around and breaks down occupations, ages and how people get to work,” Grace said.
Grace also recommends using the site Walkscore.com, which marries Google Maps with business listings to show the walking distance from an address to the nearest shops, restaurants, grocery stores and other amenities.
These online tools, Grace said, can help take some of the leg work out of searching for a home, but you still do have to go out and look at the listings that catch your fancy.
“When it comes to buying a home you can love, nothing online can replace the feeling you get when you see [a listing] outside or inside,” Grace said.
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