SERIES: Helpful Real Estate Sites – Realtor.com
Welcome to the latest series at JosephSangl.com – "Helpful Real Estate Sites".
It is my hope that this series will equip you with new information that helps you make excellent real estate decisions!
Part One – Realtor.com
I have used Realtor.com to find each of the four houses that I have purchased.
This web site is an excellent way to understand market prices and to understand market availability.
Here are some specific reasons I love Realtor.com:
- Easy to search You are able to select the specific items you are interested in. For example, if you are interested in a three bedroom, two bathroom house with a garage, you can search for that. If you want to search for listings that include land, then you can select that also. Another key search criteria is square footage.
- Price range specific You can search for specific price ranges of houses within your set criteria. This really helps one understand what is available within that price range.
- Listings are mapped You can see all of the listings on a map. This is a great feature that allows you to understand the inventory available within the location you have selected.
- Pictures Many of the listings have photos of the exterior and interior. Instead of setting up a walkthrough, you can do so from your computer!
- Seamlessness Once you find some homes that you are interested in, you can select "Request a showing" from the actual listing. Awesome!
Those are some of the reasons that I love Realtor.com. Have you used this resource before?
Visit Realtor.com
I too found my home using Realtor.com. In fact, we pulled up not less than thirty of forty listings and because of all that the site was able to show us were able to eliminate several houses from our list without ever having to leave home.
I don’t know if you talk about this on your website, but a couple of tools my wife and I have learned to use when buying a home are the free online tax records available through the county tax office. We often compare the assessed taxable value of comparable homes with their asking various asking prices. Also, through GIS maps we compare lot sizes, and heated square footage. Through these comparisons we have been able to determine a homes actual value and how much it will appreciate -or sometimes depreciate.
When we did our search for the home we are now in, we quickly discovered that our it was at the top of the scale for our neighborhood. And while not likely to appreciate given the market, it would probably hold its value, even though some of the surrounding neighborhood wasn’t aging too well. We found other homes in other neighborhoods that were larger, newer, or less expensive, but when all the varibles were in place, a little bit of dollar cost averaging made it clear that the home we have now offered the best bang for our buck.
Great website. I look forward to reading more.
Tim Wade