http://www.realtor.ca/

I think this was on here before but thought i'd remind everyone.

New name starts on Oct 2nd.

Just to let you know that both websites are running now and they are planning for both to be running for certainly the near future.

www.mls.ca

www.realtor.ca

Yeah, that's right. They were orignally going to do it in May but they kept pushing it back for some reason. Dunno why.

FYI, (speaking as a Realtor) you'll save yourself a lot of time and hassle by meeting with your Realtor and looking at listings with their help instead of doing it on your own on that website. I have lots of clients who I know have spent hours and hours compiling info on listings on there. Then, they meet with me and in a matter of minutes I can see that many of them aren't even close to what they say they're looking for (but they can't tell just from the listing that took them so long to find). Then we find something that suits them better more easily. It's really because Realtors have access to more powerful searches and know what's out there and how to find it. We often even know a handful of well priced matching properties off the top of our heads.

What I'm getting at, is that I recommend putting your Realtor to work so you can save your own time. Doesn't matter where in Canada your talking about.

Oh, and BTW I don't recommend calling the Realtor who has the listing to view that particular listing. (I'm going to catch heat from the other Realtors for this, as I have in the past.) I wrote about why in detail here.

I'll second that. Our house is up for sale and I couldn't even initially find it on the MLS. So, if anyone wants to buy a house in Cochrane have a look for MLS number C3350379

About time they had a decent site to utilise!

Not always practical of course what with sometimes looking at Canadian property from the UK.

In our case we were living in Montreal and looking at NB. Our own research of listings led us to favour Moncton and from then on we compiled our own list. I have to say that back then there seemed more detail in the descriptions. Not only that but different sites had different descriptions - not contradictory, just a different focus - whereas now they all seem the same. One could get a better picture of the property then compared to what I see on the sites now.

Anyway, having identified the realtor we were to use, I sent him our spreadsheet of MLS numbers, prices, photos, descriptions and maps and that gave him a very good idea of what we were after. He made comments on many that he knew about state of disrepair, situation etc.

He had such a good idea of what we wanted that when he made suggestions of houses coming onto the market since we made our list, we had already added them.

For us, the research we did ourselves from out of province was a major factor in us seeing so many 'possibles' and being able to make a great choice of home during our visit.

I would imagine there are others for whom such prior research would be beneficial too.

Seeing is essential as well, of course. Our original Number One choice was horrible.

I totally agree with you.

Stewart.

the new site is not easy to navigate

No, it's not, the old one was easier to use and I'm on some sort of mega-wonderful fast connection. On a dial up line the new one would be unusable. I hope no one put any great amount of work into it.

Its very easy to navigate plus it actually has a map function thats well well overdue! at least you can search and see in geographical areas now!

Same old story people dont like change! - We should have stayed in the caves or maybe the trees

But that's problematic, it takes a long time to determine where to put the dots for property for sale so you can't easily scroll over the map; you need to start exactly where the house you want is.

I just had a look at the new site.

Christ, what a dog's breakfast. I wonder how much some incompetent got paid for that?

It seems to have some data quality issues. I can't believe that none of the houses for sale in the Beach are on mls and, when I click on properties around Orangeville, I'm transported to Brazil (kinda nice) or Saskatchewan (less so).

The old version was easier to use, and had much more logical click throughs. However the new site has a much better map search - I like it.

But if you have a specific area you want to live - as I always have isnt that a big plus?