After a night of investigating some new website stuff, a new spam filter for the blog, some interesting new prospects for playing flash video, an overall assessment of website performance… I got to thinking about a common thread in many different real estate blogs. Articles with titles like:

• Big Changes at Zillow.com – Are they becoming a national MLS? – from the Ubertor Blog
• Google Implements Local Search Results – from Future of Real Estate Marketing

I got to wondering WHY MLS.ca seems to have lost in real estate searches to Google and others. So I did a little looking around, I went over to MLS.ca do do a little checking. Now I realize real estate agents do not use MLS.ca to do searches, and that may be why nothing has been done about it. Here are a few of the website atrocities I noticed:

1. Load time from the time I typed “mls.ca” into my browser, until the time I had relevant search results for properties in the Kitsilano area of Vancouver was an astounding 40 seconds. As a reference, I typed “Kitsilano Real Estate” into google and was presented 109,000 search results in less than 1 second.
2. Ease of use Count them, 5 maps I had to click on!
   • The British Columbia portion of a map of Canada.
   • Then click on “Vancouver – Lower Mainland” on a map of BC.
   • Next (when it loaded), I got to choose “Greater Vancouver”, I thought “Great! finally the area I want!”.
   • Wrong! Assuming that I am immigrating to Vancouver from say, Toronto (some say escaping rather than immigrating) I needed to determine if Kitsilano is in VW, VE, BU or RI.

   

   • That aside, after choosing VW, I finally get to choose between KT, FA, AR or gag me now…

   I feel sorry I had to write all that. You probably didn’t read this far! I wouldn’t.

   So Why did I have to click on 5 maps, then select my property search criteria just to see listings!

Before someone points out the “Advanced Search” page on MLS.ca would have been quicker, I will try to recall the the last time I clicked on the advanced search link in google. Never! Why? Because I don’t have to.

It is not too late, some basic site redesign, speed enhancements and a proper marketing effort could save MLS.ca. The call for change might have to come from the people who don’t use it, the Real Estate Agents.

I have heard a lot about assessments these days. It is my understanding that they had not been kept up to date and with skyrocketing housing prices in the Lower Mainland, some homeowners are going to be hit with a big increase in the taxes. To help residents determine if their assessment is fair, BC Assessment has opened up their online database for free to the general public until March 15th. Type in your address and the query will return the last sale price and the value of your assessment for you and other residences on your street. Want to know what your neighbours paid for their house last year? Check it out on the BC Assessment website – Assessments and Sales by Address 2007.

Another great feature, if you are looking to buy or sell a home, is their Sales Select Sysytem 2007. The system allows you to specify a neighbourhood and property type and returns the selling price of the first 100 sales closest to July 1st, 2006 are returned. These services are always available to the general public but are free of any fees for the next 2 months.