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Archived Articles
Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.
He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.
In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.
Global Real Estate Project
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Canada:Where To buy a home in CanadaIs it easy to find the right home in Canada? The answer seems obvious, there are lots of real estate sites on the net, full of houses and condominiums, virtually for every budget. So I decided to look for my dream home, using the pan-Canadian sites of some of the most prestigious real estate companies*. The results were very interesting and a little disappointing, in sum I didn't find what I was looking for. Why not, with so many houses on the market? I'll explain this later because I want to begin with the positive assessments.
What I found on the net?The first positive thing was that I found local directories of real estate offices and agents for every company mentioned in the endnotes. The second very constructive moment was that I could see thousands of properties, from the most to the least expensive. There were pages for posting resumes as well as search engines for finding the right property. In fact, if the price was the only criterion of my search, I could honestly say that the house of my dreams was one click away.
What I didn t find on the net?Now let's close this optimistic page and open the next one, not so bright. What I saw were just pictures of houses, nice pictures, but can a picture tell you something about the area, about the school system and achievements, about the crime levels, the climate etc.? No. That is the weakest point in all pan-Canadian sites of these huge real estate companies. If you want to see what stands behind the picture, you have to browse tens of local sites of the same companies, which means wasting much more of your precious time.Of course there are some local links (links, not author notes) for every major city on the Century 21 Canada site, as well as some general financial advice and articles on the Royal LePage site. But this extra information can is a drop of water in a desert. What to do? Why do the national real estate associations care so little about detailed area information that could go perfectly with the listed properties? It's a proven fact that most of the relocations don't go beyond the boundaries of the town, even fewer beyond the limits of the province and only a smallest fraction include people going to the other side of the country and even abroad. So why should these companies on the national level waist resources and inform people about lakes, wild life and history of the areas they ll never see in their lifetime. Maybe it s a sound business attitude but let s be frank, people don t relocate far away not for the last reason because they don t know very well any other place except their own area. On one hand, they can learn enough about the different states and provinces via different media, on the other hand they can see what the house prices are there, but these customers can t link these two kind of information and imagine what is this area all about without going there in person.Half a year ago I faced a similar problem, relocating from Eastern Europe to Canada. There were many companies showing properties and also many other Web sites, full of useful information about the city I was planning to live in. But there weren't commercial sites, linking together these two kinds of information both on national and community level, so the newcomer could choose where is the most appropriate area for him to live. So the next time I visit these national sites I hope not only to get a general idea about the prices but also to zoom out from the individual house to the whole neighborhood where people live and enjoy life.
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See also the directory of companies providing real estate services in, and general real estate information of Canada.
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