Hat's off to anyone who "gets" the reference to a 1970's Palmolive commercial...
This move to central Iowa has been an eye-opening experience. One of the things it's really brought home is the fact that technology has become so pervasive in our lives that it dictates how and why we do things.
Take for example our house search. Technology is not only aiding our search, but it is guiding it. Allow me to explain.
In 1998 when we decided to look for homes in Spencer, we had very limited access to information to aid us in our search. We had our realtor, and we had a few newspaper ads. The saving grace was the fact that we were in Spencer, Iowa and not Ankeny, Iowa at the time, so we had a much smaller haystack within which to find the needle.
Fast-forward to 2011 here in central Iowa. We still have the assistance of a realtor (who, like our Spencer realtor John Goede, is doing an excellent job...thanks Erika Hansen!). But now we have technology to aid us in our "scouting". So now we spend a few minutes (or, lets be honest, a few hours) on Realtor.com or Zillow.com scouting for possibilities. When we come across a house that we have some level of interest in, we "Save" it to our online account. When we decide on a home we want to go physically walk through, we email Erika the online listing and she sets it up (using email, of course, to communicate with the listing realtor).
When we arrive at the showing, we are armed with our iPhones. The iPhone acts as a multi-purpose device in the house hunt. First of all, it's our navigation device to find the house we are going to look at. Type in the address and follow the instructions. Secondly, it's a note pad. As we prepare for the showing, we use an app to type in notes of things we want to check during the walk-through, and during the walkthru its what we can use to take notes about what we find.
Our iPhones are our digital cameras that we use to take photos of things that catch our eye. It's also our video camera that we use to do a video walk-through of the house. And finally, the iPhone serves as our mobile internet hub so we can continue our house search from the road. For example, one night we took a walk through a nearby neighborhood. As we passed a house that had a "FOR SALE" sign in the yard, I would use one of the iPhone apps to look it up and see if it was in our price range. The Zillow.com app even has an interactive map that allows you to see a symbol for every listed house in an area, then zoom in on it. It uses the GPS to know where you are in relation to the listing, so as you drive around town, you can see all of the houses for sale in your vicinity.
So obviously technology, particularly the internet, has been a huge help in our job search. But the surprising part for both of us is how important access to a quality internet connection is in actually SELECTING a place to live.
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