I use Google Maps and AllHomes to study the land shape and size, Street View to check out inclines etc and the home itself. Then I also use SV to look around the streets to check for anything funny, then calculate distances to bus stops, shops etc. There's a lot you can tell about a property just using these basic tools. Then I print out maps of suburbs I'm hunting in and start circling the houses I'm interested in. Most people only keep their eyes on 3-6 suburbs when hunting and within those suburbs a lot of the streets are write-offs anyway (near freeways, factories, more than 8 mins walk to bus stops etc), so of the 3-6 suburbs you can generally narrow it down to 10-15 streets per suburb, so it's not as big of a task as you would think. Remember these aren't just the nice streets / houses. These are the properties you would be willing to pounce on - willing to put in offers within a few minutes, sight unseen. You could still find yourself buying other properties outside your marked zones, but within these marked zones are the ones that you can almost purchase without thinking. "Without thinking" being the key words here - if you want the ability to move insanely fast, this is how you do it. While the others are still there thinking about it, looking at Google maps, talking about going to the open house, you've got the agent on the line. If you have say 50-100 properties marked, by law of probability you're almost guaranteed to have one hit the market within a reasonable time frame. This has happened to me twice this year already. It's not guaranteed to work, but every advantage you can get helps! And even if it doesn't work, in doing so it forces you to learn each suburb in more detail than even most locals. So even if a property outside your hot zone comes up, you're able to analyse it much more quickly than anyone else.