I don’t know if any of you have seen this or use this for your business but it’s a great resource. I just checked out some homes I have lined up that I have never been to and I could get a rough idea as to what I will be doing. On one of them I was able to see three sides of the house. I could also see some potential trouble spots which is good to see before hand so that I can be prepared and start thinking about my plan of attack.
Check it out!
Google’s Street View is cool, and I still use it for some situations, but usually it will only give you one side… the side facing the road.
If you’d like to check out all 4 sides of a building, try maps.live.com. Select “aerial view”. You can rotate and zoom. On some houses you can actually get a decent window count. Not all areas are available for aerial view, about the same as street view.
If you have a blackberry, smartphone, or ipod and have the latest version of Google maps, street view should be on it. It’s a great tool.
I use Zillow.com too. It uses Microsoft Earth. I like this because it also gives the house value. I just don’t like looking at the value of my house :(.
I actually did an estimate with it the other day, pretty cool indeed. Soon we will all be slaves to Google as they will own every piece of information in the world.
Yeah maps.live.com is pretty cool too! Too bad it does not zoom in a few more times. As for Zillow, is that just house for sale or does it list all houses. Also what do you like about it? Does it show you all four sides of the house or something or are you looking at the square footage?
Be careful about zillow.com, I don’t use it, but I’ve heard/read a lot about it not being accurate. It won’t be a life or death difference if any, but I’d rather use tax records for value and sq footage.
Another plus with Google Maps is the ruler feature.
Back in my pressure washing days I could get a rough square footage estimate on larger jobs, like parking lots or commercial strips. I figured I got it +/- within 500 square feet, so when I put a bid in over the phone I cut the difference and added 250 sqft onto what I measured, that way the least I could cut myself was 250 sqft.
Im a newbie here and was reading though some subjects and came across this about google maps and I have to say that is one great idea. Ive used google maps many time but for long distance travel,but never connected it as a tool for scoping out a potential customers home and looking at the job without actualy going there. Awsome Idea All ya need is to ask them thier adress when they call ya and give them a quote over the phone if you like. No wasting gas to go look at the job… Just Google the address!! Great Idea THANK YOU
