Remember those TV shows that would reveal a magician’s secrets behind the tricks? How it all works? In real estate it sometimes feels like magic when we show a neighbourhood to a client that fits all their must haves. And here, dear reader, we will reveal one of the tricks we have up our sleeves.

When starting out a search we sit down with our clients and ask lots of questions. Here’s one common progression: Do you take public transit to work? Where do you work? How long of a commute are you willing to make?

After, magically, we find the areas where your commute will be less than your specified 37 minutes using transit. How do we do it? Mapnificent.net (http://www.mapnificent.net/toronto/) A warning: it’s in beta, it’s not perfect, but it’s a hell-of-a good visual tool.

Plug in your work address and slide the bar in the bottom right corner to how long you are willing to commute for. The map grays out the parts of the city that are outside your time-frame. And it’s not just the TTC: they’ve blended in Go Transit, York Region Transit, and even Hamilton, Guelph and Waterloo Region’s services. Under settings you can pick your time of travel and day to be even more exact.

Cool, eh?

Of course, we then take those results and perform some hocus-pocus to narrow the search. We do want you to have a magical home-buying experience after all.