From time to time I would point my clients to www.realtor.ca to do some of their own searches and to educate themselves. For basic property searches, www.realtor.ca serves it’s purposes very well. Overall I really like the www.realtor.ca site.
But now there’s a new player in town, www.zoocasa.com. Combining listing information and mapping technology provided by Google Maps, Zoocasa.com allows users to personalize their search experience and discover community, demographic and lifestyle information to help them choose the right home.
Searching for Properties
I searched for homes in the Yonge St/Major Mackenzie neighbourhood in Richmond Hill.
The familiar screen of www.realtor.ca plots the results on a map. Zooming in will pin point the exact location of the property. Clicking on the red dot will allow you to view the property listing. The results are all the listings that are on the MLS system.
Zoocasa’s results are very clean and much more pleasing to the eye. However I noticed a strange anomaly. If you click on the photo, you can see there is one blue dot with 143 properties. After a quick investigation, I found that a lot of the properties were from elsewhere in the Richmond Hill. Maybe properties with no address were all lumped together at the center of Richmond Hill. Other than that, the map search is very similar to www.realtor.ca. The results are taken from brokerages that co-operate with Zoocasa so if a brokerage did not sign up with Zoocasa than you would not see their listings on the site.
Listings
The property listings for both www.realtor.ca and Zoocasa are nearly identical. Both have identical listing descriptions and interior photos. However, Zoocasa goes one step further and provides other tools for potential home buyers.
Zoocasa Extras
Neighbourhood demographics
Mortgage Calculator
Google StreetView
Points of Interest Nearby
Schools
Walkscore – amenities that are in walking distance.
Commute calculations
My conclusion is www.realtor.ca is great for basic property searches. www.zoocasa.com gives a more detailed search that is helpful with their array of tools.
Both these sites are great but there’s no substitution for contacting me when buying real estate. I give you the most updated information and best of all there are no costs for my buyers
See what’s for sale in your neighbourhood – Do a quick search
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Thank-you for reading our article about “Zoocasa Review and Realtor.ca Comparison – May 18, 2010”, contact us if you need anything or leave us a comment below.
Kirby 