When I wrote about why Bonimmo exists, I described a failure I had seen up close: the information in Oaxaca's property market does exist, but it is scattered. A Facebook ad over here, a WhatsApp message over there, and the best of it might be held by someone who knows your neighbour.

That diagnosis describes the problem. It is not much use to someone who has to find a place to live this month.

So this piece is the other half: what you can actually do, today, with the market exactly as it is. This is not theory. It is what I learned building an office from scratch, and what I tell friends when they ask.

Five habits that change the search

1. Search everywhere, but keep one list.

A spreadsheet or a notebook, it makes no difference. Write down the neighbourhood, the asking price, the square metres, who you spoke to and on what date.

Your list is the only part of the whole search that does not depend on some portal still being online next week. Nor on an advisor replying, nor on a Facebook group not filling up with something else.

2. Ask whether it is still available before you fall in love.

It is the cheapest question in the search and almost nobody asks it first: "is this property still available today?".

Ask it in writing. A listing does not come down on its own when the property sells; it stays up for months, because nobody is obliged to remove it. That single question saves you visits to houses that are no longer on the market.

3. Compare per square metre, and only within the same area.

Divide the asking price by the built square metres. A single number tells you nothing; twenty numbers from the same neighbourhood tell you something.

Comparing Reforma against San Felipe will not help you. They are different markets that happen to sit near each other, and mixing them will make you believe something is cheap when it is merely somewhere else.

And keep one more thing in mind: the asking price is not the closing price. In a market with no public transaction data, what you see advertised is an opening position, not a fact. Your twenty numbers tell you what is being asked in that neighbourhood; what is actually paid you will only learn by asking, visiting and negotiating.

4. Ask about the water before you ask about the finishes.

In much of the city the supply arrives on a rotating schedule, and the answer changes street by street. How often does it come? Is there a cistern? How many litres? Is buying water by truck normal there?

It is the kind of detail that appears on no listing sheet and that decides what living there is like, every single day.

5. Put everything in writing.

Price, what is included, who pays for what, what stays and what goes. A conversation you can re-read is worth more than three phone calls you half remember. And if anything changes from what you were told, you will have the means to show it.

What Bonimmo does today, said plainly

We built the public catalogue to attack exactly the first part of the problem: so you can browse and filter in one place, free, without creating an account. You can save what interests you to favourites, run the numbers in the calculator and, when something fits, request a visit.

Now the part almost nobody writes on a real-estate blog, and the reason I am writing this one:

A property being listed here does not mean it has been verified. We do not independently confirm that it is still available, that the price is current, or that the photos are recent. Publishing is not verifying.

And requesting a visit is a request, not a confirmed appointment. When you send the form it is recorded and it reaches whoever answers for that property; the confirmation comes afterwards, from a person.

I say it this plainly because the annoyances above come precisely from someone claiming more than they could back up. I am not going to open by repeating the very mistake I came here to fix.

That is why the five habits come first and the catalogue comes second. If we disappeared tomorrow, those five would still serve you.

Where this is going

The underlying fragmentation —the absence of a shared inventory— is not solved by a catalogue on its own. It is a cooperation problem among the people who hold the properties, and that work is only beginning.

I mention it as a direction, not as something that already works. I would rather you judge it when it exists than when I promise it.

In the meantime: search everywhere, verify before you fall in love, compare within the same neighbourhood, ask about the water, and keep everything in writing.

And if something we have listed helps you along the way, it is right here.