Being Prepared From 2000km Away

This may end up being an ongoing theme, but for now I just want to address the amazing website that has been making the property searching possible. Yes you can use realtor or Point2point and other traditional sites that are ubiquitous no matter the area you’re looking. I would like to volunteer a website I have fallen in love with (largely because it is very mobile friendly and will send email notifications) that site is Viewpoint www.viewpoint.ca . It is a Nova Scotia specific real estate website that seems to be ahead of every other listing service going. Viewpoint does require an email sign up, but it is free. Having been on the site for years now, I don’t see a lot of address sales going on. What I do get is updates and notifications about properties that suit my search parameters and on properties I’ve marked as favourites. I am also obsessive about seeing new listings in my target area, and every day it refreshes with “new today”. So for my toilet scrollers (we all do it) it is a quick way to investigate. I use mobile mostly and it works really really well on a phone browser, you can move the map to get a real sense of where a place is. Saved searches lets you scroll through all the properties that suit your preferences. They are available on list view and map view. Favourites lets you save up to 70 properties to keep an eye on and receive notifications if there is a status change. The dots on the map are colour coded. Blue is for sale, green indicates a price change, orange is pending sale, red is sold, and black is expired. This becomes a second nature way to look through places. You can also zoom in on areas and when you reach a certain zoom you can see the individual lots in the area and they are coloured according to the legend if they are for sale. If there is a property I want to inquire about I will often search the address on google to see who the most consistent realtor listed is. This can be a disadvantage for viewpoint as it isn’t always listed with the proper listing agent. If you come across a listing with 4 or less pictures, the odds are good it is listed with propertyguys and you’ll have to look on their site for more pictures. I know this may not be overly entertaining, but I thought it may be helpful for people who like to fantasy house hunt. I enjoy it because I feel informed about pricing, comparables, trends, sales speed, and I can curate a list of places I want to ask about in future.