It's somewhat ironic that in the three months of this blog's life so far, we've looked at ways to do all sorts of things using online tools and resources... but we've yet to talk about different ways to use the internet to find a new home, which is our bread and butter!
Mostly, the reasoning for this is that we want New Home News to truly be a resource for prospective home buyers and sellers, and not just to be viewed as a publicity engine for our Ottawa new home search engine New Home Association.ca (it isn't.)
But since we are experts when it comes to leveraging the web in your home search, we would be remiss if we ignored the topic altogether. And so, here are the top 3 resources we've come across online to help those of you in the Ottawa area find your dream home.
1) NewHomeReviews.com
While the design of this site is a little mid-nineties and some of the content has not been updated in a few years, there is still some value to be had for Ottawans in search of a new home by visiting this site. Namely, NHR boasts a pretty comprehensive directory of Ottawa builders, including a phone number, physical address, web site and brief bio for each one.
The directory is really the only valuable resource on the site, unfortunately; a gaggle of other half-implemented ideas like a homes services directory, discussion forum and articles database are either out of date or just plain non-working. Nonetheless, aside from this blog's own exhaustive list of Ottawa builders, the NHR directory is one of the best ones online.
2) New Homes And Condos Online
The online complement to the popular Traders Corp (publishers of Auto Trader, etc.) publication New Homes and Condos, this site offers a way to search for new homes by region, type of home and price. The site serves all of Ontario, including Ottawa and he selection and variety of model homes for Ottawa is pretty good, but not great: an open search for all models pulls in about 60 results.
The presentation and functionality on this site are really clean and easy. The only potential downside of the New Homes and Condos service is the way it displays results: Basically, you are presented with a list of models from different builders that match your search query, but instead of providing more in-depth information about each one when you click on it, all of these results actually redirect to the specific builder's own website, where you will have to start from scratch, find the model and proceed from there.
What, did you think we were going to leave our own service out? Well, if we didn't believe that NHA was truly useful to potential new home buyers in Ottawa, we wouldn't waste our time going to work every morning, so it stands to reason that we would include it here!
When you visit our site, you're presented with a splash page that invites you to choose a region. Currently, we serve Ottawa and Gatineau, but an upcoming expansion will involve all of Ontario. In any case, once you've chosen Ottawa, you'll come to the home page where with one click, you can search for your dream home by price, region, type of home, builder or specific development, very similar to the options offered by New Homes and Condos (see above.)
Where we feel we offer additional value is in two areas: selection and convenience. Firstly, an open search of all our models returns literally over a thousand results (compared to 60 on NHaC.) That's what we call variety.
Secondly, all your searches and comparisons can be done right on NHA.ca, because we have uploaded all the information you could ever want about each and every model onto our own database. No need to leave and visit builder websites here there and everywhere. That's what we call convenience.
We're working on all sorts of added features as well, such as builder profile pages, a home service directory, and much more. Of course, you just need to stay tuned to this blg to hear all about the new functionalities as they're rolled out.
Well, what is your unbiased opinion, valued reader? How does our service stack up against the competition's? We'd love to hear what you think in the comments.
We're working hard to make NHA.ca the number one destination for new home searches in Ottawa, and eventually all of Ontario and beyond. We hope you like the fruits of our labour so far!
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