Terabitz: Real Estate Search Done Right

Looking for a place to live? A house? A flat? If so, you can use, well, just about any real estate-specific site or search engine to find what you’re looking for. There are a wealth of them out on the Web today. Take your pick.

What if you want to drill down more deeply, though? Not on any single house, but a neighborhood in general. You know, to gauge a particular market, find out just how many cafes are within walking distance, maybe even see about the selection of area schools. The stuff you’d customarily consider when shopping for a roof to have over your head.

If you’d like to inspect a locale without having to physically trek the streets, (though there’s nothing quite so real as roaming the land yourself, only sometimes time constraints or the fact that one might merely be casually browsing make virtual tours a wonderful second option to have), there’s a site you definitely need to check out. It’s called Terabitz, and while it might not have everything about every place “on the market” everywhere (it’s limited to scouring listings on Craigslist, Trulia, Google, and the MLS, or Multiple Listing Service), the information it does have is incredibly useful.

Did we mention it’s free?

Terabitz consists of a search bar, a main menu, and a dashboard. The main menu, or “Bitzbar”, is arranged in tabs: ‘Listings’, ‘Local’, ’Market’, ‘Education’, ‘Safety’, ‘Financing’, ‘Professional’, and ‘Misc’. Icons from the menu may be taken - drag-and-drop fashion – and placed in the Dashboard for a custom assembly of widgets. The layout is exceptional, I must say, as it gives the user the best of everything without going overboard with stats and such. It’s deal simple to work with, which is more than can be said for many sites out there today – even some of those Terabitz itself gathers info from.

If that weren’t enough, the user is given the ability to both save and email “snapshots” of the dashboard to keep as reference or to share with others, like potential roommates, or a spouse. Some may pass these features off as mere garnish, but they’re crucial, as many shopping for real estate can attest.

Whether you’re searching for a new home or really just want to know more about the zone in which you live, Terabitz is a great mashup of utilities and services, put together into very polished form. It allows one to pinpoint various pizza shops in a particular area as quickly and easily as elementary education institutions. In all, it makes "the search" – ordinarily a stressful and time-consuming one – a rather enjoyable one. Alright, maybe not enjoyable. How about bearable?