As we have been looking for houses we started tracking them in an Excel spreadsheet. It became problematic though. Here are the reasons why:

  • Rachel just couldn’t figure out URLs and hyperlinks
  • Sometimes we looked at houses on the computer, sometimes on the laptop. Transferring the spreadsheet back and forth became problematic.
  • Sometimes I looked on the computer and Rachel looked on the laptop. Keeping the spreadsheet in sync was again, problematic.
  • Sometimes Rachel would email the list to her mom or sisters. If they made notes or wanted to add some more to it for us to check out – we were again out of sync.

So I was thinking it would be to have some sort of online spreadsheet to track it in. I first looked at some online spreadsheets like Google Docs, but there were not much better. I looked around for a tool that I could use and didn’t find anything.

I’ve been trying to stay focused on Autovine and not jump from project to project. So I posted a project on GetAFreelancer.com and ended up hiring a kid back east to write a tool for me. It only took him a week and it was not really what I had invisioned, plus it was in Ruby on Rails, which I don’t really know so I didn’t want to maintain it. So I talked myself into writing a tool myself. Withing a few hours I had something workable that was better than the Excel spreedsheet.

It has been fun to work on and I’ve found it quite useful in our quest for our next home. I’ve published the tool at housesheet.com. I keep getting lots of ideas. When I first told Emily (Rachel’s sister – our real estate agent) about it, she thought it was pretty cool, so she showed it to a co-worker. Her co-worker thought it would be a nice tool to have as an agent so she could use it with her clients. So I’ve had lots of ideas for improvements and I think I may be able to find a way to monetize it. So Autovine has once again been put on the backburner while I work on this project. I don’t know when I’ll get back to it, but if I can make this work then I think it will be OK.