Google Street View

Those Google folks are always working hard to gather and index information.  On occasion it relates to real estate and is actually directly useful in the buying and selling process.  The ongoing rollout of the Street Views feature of Google Maps is a helpful tool for buyers interested in getting a sense of how houses fit into the overall neighborhood.

Google Street View

The blue roads on the above map show where Street Views are available.  Some towns in our area have much better coverage than others.  Farmington, New Britain, Newington, Weathersfield, Manchester, Windsor all have very broad coverage.  Avon seems pretty good south of Route 44, and West Hartford is good west of Main Street.  Hartford has basically no coverage and Simsbury is very weak. 

Using the feature is quite easy, and like most new things I discover on the internet, a little addictive.  Click on the “Street View” button at the top of a map to access the feature.  Roads where the feature is available turn blue, and a little yellow dude appears on the map with a picture of the surrounding area.  You can then rotate around 360 degrees as if you are standing right there in the middle of the road.

As an example of why this could be helpful, consider the picture below.  

Google Street View Victorians

Did you know that there is a cul-de-sac in West Hartford that has Victorian-style homes that were built in the mid 1980s?  They are unique in town, and if you came across one in isolation listed for sale on www.raveis.com, then you could use Google Street View to see that it’s not an odd duck dropped in the middle of 1960s-era split-level homes.

I got to wondering how they actually got all these pictures.  Rumor has it that there is a van that drives around with camera mounted on the top.  Details are sketchy.  More effort has been exerted in identifying weird scenes and situations captured by the van as it photographs the country.  Enjoy!