So the general consensus is the new site is a fail.

Awful. When I looked at my neighbourhood and sorted the results by price descending, I got a strobing loop of the top 5 homes. Totally unreadable.

got it in one Steve



Pleased its not just me

That is precisely what I told Penny Milton, the realtor with the sensible Regina site. Maybe you can find a realtor in the city you want to move to and probably they will still have sensible sites.

Take a look at this one

http://www.suttonregina.ca/search_mls_map_form1.php

I know you don't want a house in Regina, but just to see how nice it is and how user friendly it is. You can click on an area in the list on the left, just pick any one and see large photos of all houses in that neighbourhood.

Actually I commented to Penny Milton and she replied saying that lots of her clients also hate it. Hopefully if enough of us write and complain they might change it back to the old one or at least let people search by neighbourhoods/subdivisions.

ive had one of those set up for months very easy to use.

personally i think the interactive map is very handy on the new website, its just a pity it uses microsoft virtual earth as opposed to google earth with is much better IMHO.

How would it be better if it used another company's mapping software?

Would it have a better screen flow? Nope. More accurate data? Nope. Would it be faster? Maybe but it's so slow I doubt that would make it usable. Would that fix the bugs such as Biiiink's looping list? Nope. Would that meet Purley's need to easily search a specific neighbourhood? Nope.

Amid the myriad flaws in the site I think choice of earth image vendor is neither here nor there. I think the site suffers from a major design issue; the people paying for it, estate agents, don't want it to work too well as their business depends to a large extent on the existence of an imperfect market. If all houses are advertised online then all customers can find them, houses become a commodity like anything traded on ebay. Agents depend on being able to provide information not available to the general public, a good real estate site diminshes that ability.

yet another ranting post this site is famous for.

apologies, i was just giving my opinion, i dont like microsofts virtual earth, i prefer google maps as i feel it easier to use looks better and seems to have more updated areas of where im looking.

Sorry i dont get any looping and find it easy to navigate. im sure its just teething problems, nothing worth getting ones knickers in a twist over, ive more important things to worry about.

I'm sorry that you're not good with dissent and I ask that you note that none of the rest of us has any important concerns. Since you find it easy to navigate can you explain where Purley's going wrong? She seems to have a legitimate desire to do something now she could easily do before, perhaps it is supported but she misunderstands.

Have they tried sacrificing a chicken?

I agree dbd33 i think its been designed so you have to contact an estate agent, its very hard to navigate, bring back the old system we knew how to do that one from the UK.

Unless you know exactly where you are looking for and we don't.

[QUOTE=club_biscuit;6847648]I hate the new site.[QUOTE]

Me too! I tried to look at houses in Winnipeg and when I typed in 'River Heights' a quick image of River Heights flashed up on the screen and then it reverted to the area I was looking at previously, so I was still none the wiser as to where it was on the map! What a tease

It's cr@p because if you want to avoid houses in a certain area (e.g. for Winnipeg - North End, West End, etc) you can't! You've no idea where anything is.

Bring back MLS I say

Anita

An example of how the poor data quality at the realtor site confuses people:

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=565621

Yes, I think I had said - but maybe not on this board - the same thing dbd said - that its meant to be so difficult to find houses - that you consult a realtor. But that is fine for people LIVING in Canada but not for people who want to live here and would like to get some idea of houses in a certain city.

I think I would be googling for a realtor's site. I haven't tried it but I would think if you googled "realtors in Halifax" or "realtors in Calgary" etc etc. you would probably find sites like the one I found in Regina and you could use that instead of the useless realtor.ca site.

OK this may help a little bit, firstly you will need a post code map of the city/area you want to search, you will find this on Canada Posts Web Site.

Go to Advanced Search, put in your Province and City and then the Post Code of the area you want to search in, you can do it by the first 3 characters only, that gives you a fairly broad area, or tighten it up by adding the next 3 characters.

Its not perfect but it does allow you to define a specific location without the use of the Map.

I just tried the site. Horrible. The map tags throw up properties that are nowhere near where they are supposed to be.