I’m going flat-hunting this weekend. Mostly the process is unchanged since the last time I did it: estate agents are a still a bunch of overpaid liars with too much hair-gel, silly little cars and the wrong-headed idea that just because they like the sound of their own voice, I will too. It is, in short, a Kafka-esque nightmare that makes me wonder if I wouldn’t be better off hollowing out the space under my desk and staying put. It would be free, and I’d be close to the pub.

But this time I have a secret weapon. Something that will help me defeat the evil estate agent empire and emerge victorious, proud occupant of a palatial multi-room apartment somewhere nice.

I’ve got Google.

Google Maps has always been a handy flat-hunting tool, if for no reason other than you can instantly scope out your proposed house’s location and find out quickly if it’s near handy things like supermarkets, parks and train stations. But now that Google has spent a summer nipping around in funny little cars with cameras strapped to their roofs, it’s even better.

Want to know if that blank space on the map is a park or a nine-acre industrial wasteland? Street View will tell you. Is your building really a “tasteful warehouse conversion” or a horrible late-nineties architectural disaster whose only remedy involves a yellow crowd control tape and a bulldozer? Street View has the answer. It’s even handy for just arranging bookings, because it allows you to figure out exactly what a building looks like so you don’t walk past it on your way to the viewing.

I even spent a long-winded but enjoyable morning creating my own Google Maps mashup, in which flats that I want to look at have blue pins, flats which I have booked to look at have red pins, and flats that I’ve looked at and dismissed – almost all of them, I’m afraid – have yellow pins. It’s a work of beauty, complete with pictures and links to the original ad. I’d share it with you, but frankly you might find out where I live and I don’t want to have to make you all tea.

It’s so good, in fact, that I spent so long doing it that I ran out of time to make any actual appointments, which is why I’ll be doing my flat hunting next weekend instead.