Why would I want to look at my house from outer space?

Have you seen Google Earth? It's a free program that you install on your computer. It takes about 10 minutes and you don't even have to re-start it afterwards. Once it's installed you can enter an address and then see satellite pictures of that location. You can get pretty close, for example, when I google-earthed my house I could tell which of our cars was parked in the driveway. Of course, we don't have any trees over our driveway, which helps me get a good view.

So, why would your real estate agent suggest that you install such a program? Because sometimes even when you drive through a neighborhood you can't see everything. I worked with a couple who wanted to buy in the Thomas Jackson school district in Atlanta. We thought we'd found the perfect house for them. They went home and google-earthed the property and discovered that they were less than a block from a water treatment facility. When we started asking the neighbors we discovered that the facility is quiet, but often creates a mildly foul odor in the neighborhood. It's still a terrific house, and lots of people wouldn't care about that occasional smell. But these folks did, so I was very glad to have that information.

So, before you buy, take a look from the sky.

There's a link to google earth in the top left of your screen.