Thanks for the reply, and you’re just raised my opinion of the City about three points. (In my defense, I once worked as a summer laborer, and wasn’t so impressed by my co-worker)

Static URLs are your best friend, and there’s lots of tools to make dynamic URLs appear static. That’s a great resource for real estate investors though.

Drop me an email and I’ll send cookies, or I’ll drop by next time I’m in Edmonton.

Cheers!

They’re both great sites. I think that more sites need to be conscious about giving people the ability to navigate directly to a static URL, and be sure their pages look alright on multiple platforms.

$5 title searches are a good deal. I’ve almost always just done mine through TransWest, and I think I was paying $7.50. Great tip!

Thanks for the post. I actually told Dan about the Edmonton site, which I use very frequently. I tried Red Deer’s site, but the link didn’t work, so I tried to search it. I found this link, which also didn’t work. Maybe the City of Red Deer is too caught up in their Talk Like a Pirate Day celebrations to worry about site maintenance.

http://www.city.red-deer.ab.ca/Connecting+with+Your+City/City+Services+and+Departments/Information+Technology+Services/Web+Map/default.htm

Update: it’s now working!

Investor tip: I use the city maps to find legal descriptions of the property, and then I input that in https://alta.registries.gov.ab.ca where I can do a $5 title search to see exactly who the owner is and what is registered against the property (caveats, restrictive covenants, liens, mortgages, utility rights of way, etc). And for those of you who are penny counters (all of you, I’m sure), $5 is cheaper than you can get it anywhere, because that’s the base fee the government charges.

-Jerry

P.S. I like chocolate cookies, not the electronic kind.

Robert Moyles
Director, Communications
City of Edmonton