Homebuying in Canada is a tough business. Home prices are at an all-time high in most Canadian cities and the income/home price disparity is greater than ever before. Mortgages are becoming tougher to qualify for with growing mortgage amounts.
Perhaps most frustrating? The inability to find relevant information when browsing for homes online! In this digital age, the real estate industry has lagged in providing important data to homebuyers and sellers.
The solution may well be Toronto-based real estate website, RealtyForSale.ca (RFS) introduced its online service, offering all real estate related information and data to homebuyers on www.realtyforsale.ca. RFS uniquely features the most critical information homebuyers demand, such as schools nearby (including rankings), demographics and crime rates in the neighbourhood. This focus on data has RFS positioned to become the industry leader in providing consumer-friendly data to homebuyers.
Over the past several years, the US online homebuyer experience has risen in popularity with the likes of Zillow and Trulia, which similar to RFS, provides School, Crime, and Demographics data.
Canadians, however, have faced strict restrictions in accessing real estate data with regulations imposed by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), preventing public access to this data. CREA remains opposed to providing real estate data publicly, out of the fear it may negatively impact the realtor profession.
“Due to the restrictions placed on making real estate data public in Canada, RFS has focused on providing users access to all the supplementary data they can think of, which includes schools, crime rates, amenities, and demographic data,” said CEO Sayenden Supramaniyam. “We continue to develop a pipeline to grow our existing datasets to further help our clients’ homebuying process easier.”
RFS offers house hunters the ability to browse and compare homes, search by demographics or schools, add properties to favourites, signup to receive daily new listings in their area of interest and contact a realtor to assist with the home buying process.
“We understand that shopping for a home can be overwhelming, resulting in our mission to empower homebuyer’s to make the most informed decision when buying a home, as we put up to 1% cashback in their pockets,” said Sayenden.
RealtyForSale.ca may not have solved all of the questions homebuyers have when purchasing a home, but it’s a helpful tool that has taken the industry one step closer into the right direction.
