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We've already got an amalgamated real estate listing service up here in Canada, which is sanctioned and used by basically all of the real estate agents.

The only people Zoocasa would be benefiting are buyers who use that specific search site and don't bother going through an agent (who would be making recommendations from MLS).

Whether this battle was worth C21's time and lawyer fees is up for debate, but they aren't standing to lose much from the lack of an unsanctioned rip of their data. Who knows, maybe they were foreseeing some future problem with the situation getting out of control and wanted to stem it off?

Remember, Rogers is a big greedy corporation too. You don't take on someone like Rogers without a damned good reason.

Vancouver has its pros and cons. It all depends on what your lifestyle is. It's been called the No Fun City due to archaic liquor laws, restaurant/bar hours, and other things. Not a big deal to me personally.

Check out the threads on http://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver, there are a ton about people asking to move there. Recommendations about neighbourhoods, etc. Check out http://www.bctechnology.com/ if you are looking for a job in high tech.

I wouldn't be concerned about having to hide the fact that you are an American citizen, this city is full of immigrants and we generally get along quite well.

Be prepared to be shocked by real estate prices. They are insane around here. http://www.mls.ca/ has Canada wide listings.

> Let's continue that line of thought. What will Google News have
> if all of the real news corporations go out of business as they
> attempt to stay in business by charging for their services? Blogs?

People fail to make a distinction between newspapers and news reporting. *NEWSPAPERS* are doomed because they pay directly and indirectly for...

- forest workers who chop down trees
- truck drivers who haul the trees to pulp & paper mills
- pulp & paper mill workers who work on converting the trees to paper
- truck drivers who haul the paper to printing plants
- printing plant employees who print the papers
- truck drivers who haul the papers to various drop points
- and the kid who picks up the papers at the drop point and delivers them to your doorstep

That's a helluva lot of overhead. In the past, newspapers used to be able to recoup this overhead by soaking advertisers, big and small, because "they were the only game in town".
- But now Craigslist has the smaller advertisers, and the big stores have their own websites.
- Here in Canada, realestate agents have their own website http://www.mls.ca/ where you can search for the type of home you want, number of bedrooms/bathrooms you want, location you want, etc, etc. I can narrow the results down to a couple of dozen homes in a few minutes. Beats the daylights out of poring through pages of homes for sale ads, 95% of which are totally wrong for me.
- If I want the latest sports scores and league standings, I can go to MLB.COM, NFL.COM, NHL.COM, etc. And unlike newspapers, I don't have to wait till Tuesday to see how standings are affected by a west-coast game on Sunday evening.

> But what where will the blogs get the news to rehash if no one is
> reporting news because they all went out of business? Crowd-sourced
> news? Come on Slashdot, throw the "big media is biased, news sucks,
> free news is better" line at me and tell me how much better news will
> be after the death of real reporting.

Let me throw a few websites at you...
- abc.com, cbs.com, nbc.com, fox.com, cnn.com, etc, etc
- bbc.co.uk, cbc.ca, etc, etc.

I repeat, newspapers are the horse+buggy of the 21st century. People didn't stop travelling when the horse faded away, they adopted newer modes of travel. Similarly, people won't stop getting news when newspapers fade away. They'll get it from electronic media instead.

Hey, that's a great idea! I bought a house last year, and I loved using MLS. Pictures, number of rooms, lot size, house age, almost everything you could want to know before going to see a house. And if the data wasn't there, then we just never went to check out the house.

I'm not sure what kind of revenue model you could use for this, though. The MLS system is funded by Real Estate agents, who pay to be able to see the postings the instant they are posted (as I understand it). That gives them 24 hours to contact their clients, try to set up a viewing, sell the house, and make their commission before the general public sees things. Funding for this database could be a small price to post, or a small subscription fee to access. The first would be easier to administer.

Of course, this is only one-way searchable. The seller posts the house, interested buyers then contact the seller. That would be analogous to employers posting jobs and waiting for job-seekers to contact them. Maybe you could set up a parallel site, with employees who want to posting their CVs, and providing employers the ability to search that.

Of course, for this to work, it would rely on the cooperation and honesty of the people using the system. Provide plenty of fields for searching, and hope that everyone fills them in properly. If they don't (as happened in MLS sometimes), well, they get less hits.

Yes, but Toronto accommodation is better value. This is the cheapest house in Toronto. This is the cheapest house in Vancouver. (If the links don't work, go to MLS.ca and search for C451997 and 399618). I live in Vancouver and I've been through some of these crackshack houses. The lots are much smaller than in Toronto, too.

Yes, but Toronto accommodation is better value. This is the cheapest house in Toronto. This is the cheapest house in Vancouver. (If the links don't work, go to MLS.ca and search for C451997 and 399618). I live in Vancouver and I've been through some of these crackshack houses. The lots are much smaller than in Toronto, too.

Why right here in North America! $3,150CAD

And since this is Canadian dollars, his $7,000 should buy up half the town!

A similar thing happened a few years back in Newfoundland, waterfront homes were going for like $6,000 and then the Americans discovered this and bought them up as summer homes.

Then again, I'm not sure what you'd do with a house in Saskatchewan in summer or winter, winter just sucks more cause it's absolute zero outside. In the summer you can watch your dog run, for miles and miles or something.

Why did I use mls.ca? Simple. I don't like sales people. This limits my time with the necessary evil of dealing with them.

- Xabbu - Sysop: clockworkorangebbs.org
- Tradewars - LoRD - FidoNet and much more!

MLS (Multiple Listing Service) offers a good cross-section of the market across most of Canada:
http://www.mls.ca/
Of course, no amount of web-surfing will get you the perfect house. For that, you actually have to go out in the real world, and deal with real people. Horror of horrors!

I take posession on the 15th of July.



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It works on two levels. One, the realtor may miss something you may actually like, even though it's not what you requested in the first place. We had a few of those.

Two, the realtor can find homes that match what you want, however the web gives you a quick way of looking up what (s)he's given you. Sometimes just looking at a pink house with a bright blue garage just doesn't cut it, you know?

I used MLS Online to search in Calgary. It can be used for Canada, and became an invaluable tool.

Here's an example of a home offering pictures.

And here's mine, come take a look!

In the end we ended up deciding to build a new home, but the process was there for the internet to help.

Vip

It works on two levels. One, the realtor may miss something you may actually like, even though it's not what you requested in the first place. We had a few of those.

Two, the realtor can find homes that match what you want, however the web gives you a quick way of looking up what (s)he's given you. Sometimes just looking at a pink house with a bright blue garage just doesn't cut it, you know?

I used MLS Online to search in Calgary. It can be used for Canada, and became an invaluable tool.

Here's an example of a home offering pictures.

And here's mine, come take a look!

In the end we ended up deciding to build a new home, but the process was there for the internet to help.

Vip

It works on two levels. One, the realtor may miss something you may actually like, even though it's not what you requested in the first place. We had a few of those.

Two, the realtor can find homes that match what you want, however the web gives you a quick way of looking up what (s)he's given you. Sometimes just looking at a pink house with a bright blue garage just doesn't cut it, you know?

I used MLS Online to search in Calgary. It can be used for Canada, and became an invaluable tool.

Here's an example of a home offering pictures.

And here's mine, come take a look!

In the end we ended up deciding to build a new home, but the process was there for the internet to help.

Vip

If you're thinking of moving to Canada (or within) www.mls.ca is a pretty comprehensive listing. As far as I can tell, this site lists all MLS (not exclusive) listings in Canada. I'm not sure how the realestate market works in USA or elsewhere. Here, almost all listings are put in the MLS system, so a site like this works pretty well.

Lately (in the past 6 months) I've notice an 'explosion' of ComFree houses being advertised via lawn signs. ComFree seems to offer a pretty slick service, including VR tours. The housing market in Winnipeg has taken off in the last year or so, and as a result the need for a high pressure real estate agent has dropped. It will be interesting to see how well ComFree does when the housing market cools off.