Slashdot Mirror
Searching for Real Estate Using the 'Net?
digThisXL asks: "We've all used the Internet to search for real estate at one time or another. But has the 'net truly become an effective tool to search for real estate? Are we going to be stuck with using real estate agents forever? I have found HomeSeekers to provide nice maps; Realtor.Com and the Michigan Multiple Listing Service provide up-to-date listings; but there doesn't seem to be a definitive search site! What are the best ways your readers have discovered to uncover those hidden gems?" There's also (obviously) Realty.Com (no confusion there), as well, but I've never used it and happened into it one day. What do you folks think of these sites? If you have local real estate sites that you know of (like the Michigan site listed by the submittor), then please share -- another Slashdot reader who lives close to you may be asking this same question.
Just input your preferred GPS coordinates and a radius and it lists all houses for sale sorted by price, sq. ft., etc.
www.cyberhomes.com is a good starting point.
realtor.com (run by homestore.com) will have most of the MLS listings for most areas of the US. many individual realtors and brokers/real estate companies that have their own websites and info-by-phone systems use the same data as realtor.com. lag time for a listing becoming active and actually showing on the web can be anywhere from a day to a couple of weeks, depending on how often the site gets updated... in many cases, it's all automated, and unless an agent sees that one of their listings isn't there, it might not ever show up on the web. and when it does, don't trust the picture. go look at the house. it's amazing what resizing can do to a picture.
when I bought my house, I printed up a few houses I liked from realtor.com, and took them to a company I was somewhat familiar with. the house I bought hadn't even hit the web yet, and it was exactly what I was looking for. so use the web to browse, and get a firm idea of what you're looking for, then deal with an agent directly. if the agent doesn't listen to you, ask for another agent or go to a different company. also, agents will show houses that are listed by different companies.
good luck!
califmls.com will send you e-mail alerts of every house that comes up in your parimeters. . . .
What could I do online?
My wife and I had four days to see Dundee before moving so we needed a relatively short list of properties to view. This really helped winnow the list down.
As a result I have a house of a suitable size, walking/bike distance from work, 5min walk from school (for my kids), park, shops, swimming pool etc.
It could have been done without the web but it was so much easier with.
For the first-time buyer, a good realtor can be immensely helpful. There's tons of paperwork and bureaucracy involved, and unless you've really done your homework, a realtor can be quite helpful. And if you're new to the area, there's plenty about prospective neighborhoods that the internet will never reveal, and you need an experienced realtor to help clue you in.
Also, in a tight market, a good percentage of places will be sold the first day they get listed, and will never make it to the web.
I should qualify that we used a buyer's broker -- in other words, he worked for us, and helped us to find a place, and wasn't trying to sell us a house he was listing. This is a change from the old-fashioned realtor who was really only working for the seller, but would claim to have your interests in mind. (This isn't to say there aren't plenty of worthless realtors or buyer brokers out there...)
For the experienced and knowledgable buyer or seller, a realtor is probably not necessary. But for someone new to the process, it would be very difficult to get by without one. Just do your homework and interview any prospective agents until you find one you like. It worked for us.
Not necessarily. When my wife and I wanted to buy a house in Howard County (MD - 45 min. from DC), she started haunting Realtor.com, and she found the place we bought (and now live in) less than 4 hours after it was listed.
The agent said he had 5 inquiries from Realtor.com users before he had time to put up a "For Sale" sign.
Speed of posting seems to depend entirely on the agent or broker.
I don't happen to like Realtor.com much, myself. If you're not sure exactly sure what you want or exactly where you want to live, it's useless. It only works if your wants/needs are already well-defined.
But for our most recent purchase, it did its job -- which was to put us in touch with the agent who had the listing with as little fuss as possible.
- Robin
I agree with the subject of your post.
I do not agree with the negative slant. If a "Realtor" "sits on a house" and decides to let their clients (or their office's clients) get first crack, it affects almost all MLS agent/users, not just independent buyers.
In addition, this "monopoly" of which you write is a farce. The MLSes are generally not public or government supported entities. They are realtor funded and supported resources who's purpose is to add value to _realtors_, not give you a free ride. If all you get to see is slightly aged (and older) listings, well, I guess you are out a whole $0.00.
Disclaimer: IANAREA, but I could fake it.
...yellow number five, yellow number five, yellow number five...
i'm settling on a house in ten days. i was lucky in that i used to work for realtors, so i hired one as my buyer's broker, and he just gave me access to the mls system and let me search. the mls system's search features are completely useless, but by going to the websites of various real estate companies, you can often find mls numbers to look up. one word of warning: double-check the information you find in the mls listings. for details on why it's not necessarily accurate, see my rant at:
http://jeffcovey.net/ramblings/mris.html
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Why did I use mls.ca? Simple. I don't like sales people. This limits my time with the necessary evil of dealing with them.
- Xabbu - Sysop: clockworkorangebbs.org
- Tradewars - LoRD - FidoNet and much more!
- Jimbob
New listings show up daily. There's enough calling and faxing and so on already with a house purchase that it's *really* nice for there to be a good web interface that you can look over without having any human/low-tech interaction.
My wife and I just used them (http://ziprealty.com) to purchase a condo in Boston. We were very happy with the whole process -- we had a lot more control over what we were doing than we would have with a conventional broker (since we got to go over the actual MLS information), and when we wanted to go out to see actual places, the agent was very nice and helpful. Totally recommended.
And the 1% rebate doesn't hurt!
many of the ads are actually spam - they're false listings, or (now and then) real listings provided by a realtor through whom you must go to view the property.
Of course, this isn't unique to the internet -- you'll find exactly the same behavior in the classified ads in the newspaper.
I recently put a downpayment on a piece of property sight unseen, and found that it wasn't quite what we were expecting. Fortunately, I asked the seller to add a clause specifying that we had 60 days to see the property in person, and cancel the contract with full refund of downpayment, if desired. Get this clause should you decide to purchase property over the 'net, it's a life saver.
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
What advantage does a realtor have in spending time (and thus money) to put ads up on the internet?
My spouse and I just (two days ago) sold our house, and our realtor told us that close to 80% of their clients came to them and asked to see houses that they had found on the net. He said it was well worth the money to list the house (and get the IPix shots).
It's also great for us, since we're moving to the other side of the continent. We can pick some examples of houses we like, and give the MLS numbers to our buying agent, and save a lot of time by not looking at houses that don't fit our needs/wants.
Just junk food for thought...
Like Taco, I sold out about two years ago and still own a piece and run the tech side of the site.
Few if any people actually BUY online but most buyers use the net heavily to sift and sort the potential homes. We also offer a system which notifies buyers when new listings match their search criteria. We've been doing that for over 3 years. Most folks go through two stages in the search. First they use the search system to look at the existing listings to see if they find anything they like. Then they switch over to a mode where they focus on the new listings. We add about 5-10 listings per day.
Most folks agree that anyone with the title of Broker, Agent, or Dealer will be a vanishing breed. These middlemen used to have total control of the market because they controlled the information.
There are lots of sites that have tried to make FSBO work. One of the big national sites, Owners.com, went under May 1st. They offered three levels of service $150, $80 and free. All but a few went with free. Because the listing werefree there was no barrier to keep junk or trial listings off of the site so it was full of junk listings. Junk listings made it useless to search the site so the buyers stayed away. We focus on just Indy for now. Having a hundred listings is useless if there are just 2 in each state. You must have a critical mass to succeed.
We charge $239. Only serious sellers put their home on our site. For that fee we can advertise, pay our staff, make Sharp looking signs, and do all the other things which keep our success rate at or above that for the local Agents and we never refuse a listing. Ever. We also offer contract, consulting, and mortgage services for those who want help.
I sold my last house through the site last May. It was just a little harder than selling a car. We saved $11,000. Hell yes! I'm willing to put in a little effort to save that much. You can't save that much clipping coupons in a lifetime! Selling on the web, without an agent, is actually easier since you show the home far fewer times. This is because our listings have 5-6 photos and you don't show the house to people who are going to take one step inside and go "I HATE that [fill in the blank]!" They already looked at it online and didn't waste your time. Our buyer was in a town 60 miles away when she found our house. Arranged the showing over the phone and made an offer within 10 days. At full price. An agent might show your house 50-100 times to get ONE offer. That's fifty times you have to Clean the place from top to bottom and drag the kids out. I have toddlers and that's a HUGE pain.
The feedback we get usually follows that model. I've had customers say they that they want one call and one showing per offer. One some houses we get VERY close to that ratio. It is the greatest rush to get a message from a seller saying that they just saved enough to send their kids to COLLEGE! There are some neighborhoods where people don't list with agents anymore. They've seen all their neighbors succeed with us. (go to the site and do a keyword search for "old stone")
I could go on for hours. Running IndyFSBO/Homeyeah has been a real eye-opener for me. Lots of folks with the Broker/Agent/Dealer title make a pile of money doing what most consumers could themselves.
I used to work on real estate web sites.
Most local MLSs (multiple listing services) have sites that are open to the public. Here in Chicago, the site is called www.mlsni.com.
Although MLSs aren't national, they tend to be the most complete databases around. But sometimes there isn't a single MLS you can use. I think there are something like 20 MLSs in Cleveland, and I'm pretty sure that at least parts of Manhattan don't have one at all. So depending on where you are, you might have some luck with your local newspaper's site.
It also makes sense to look at the company specific sites. Most towns have one or two large players who control most of the listings -- searching their sites will turn up most of the stuff you're interested in.
In order to understand the situation, you have to start with the fact that Realtors make their money in large part from their privilaged access to MLS systems. If you want to sell your house getting listed in the MLS is important, and if you want to do that, you have to pay a Realtor.
And on the flip side, a great deal of the profits from the business come from selling things like mortgages to home buyers. That's why you see companies like GMAC running their own real estate companies.
How does this affect the web? Well, in a universe where MS's Home Advisor functions as a national real estate marketing database, MS gets to sell the banner ads to the mortgage companies. Large realtors want to keep control over the customer -- they want to steer him or her to their own mortgage company. So the national aggregator web sites like Realtor.com and Home Advisor were seen as threats.
Just because the rise of the web has rendered the proprietary systems of the past obsolete technically doesn't mean that Realtors want to give up their leverage. None of the 800 lb. gorillas in the current dynamic have an interest in an efficient web based system where everyone has equal access to the market.
The big companies definitely saw things like Home Advisor as a real threat. And they've done what they can to block it.
So why do the aggregators exist at all? Well, MLSs are run by local boards of realtors. And those guys tend to be dominated by small realtors who have lots of votes. Coldwell Banker might sell 40% of the houses in your town, but they probably get pushed around a bit on the local realty board by small companies with a few offices at most. And those small companies user their votes to allow the MLS to sell all of its listings to the homestore.com and homeadvisor.com's of the world.
There are an awful lot of complicated power struggles going on behind the scenes.
The long and the short of it is that an open, efficient web based marketplace for homes is only slightly more likely to happen than open, efficient, online sales of GM cars. Too many people with too much money and clout will lose if it happens.
So which slashdot editor is looking for a house and expecting a good deal from one of the sites?
This is without a doubt the most pathetic AskSlashdot in over 24 hours.
--- I do not moderate.
At first I was going to joke about using TerraServer to help with real estate decisions. (What should I buy today? I'll just give the TerraServer a spin...)
Then i look it up...and Microsoft has placed it in their HomeAdvisor site.
Of course, they no longer let you simply put in an address. (People want to see landmakrs! :P ) So you might want to get your latitude (slt) and longitute (slg) from your url returned by maps.yahoo.com
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
but when it came to finding someone to put a new roof on the house these guys did a great job.
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We did a job busting the local real estate association hq from Novell to NT several years ago and what with MLS etc they are ALREADY highly networked and databased - it's just a matter of putting up a web front end on it. For searching out of town it's a dream come true, or just for 'searching' (pattern matching) in general - you don't have to subscribe to out of town papers to get the classifieds, make long distance calls, completely trust some agents judgement to find what YOU want. Nobody is going to close deals over a web form, unless it's securing a property with a credit card # untill the agent can be contacted, but it is sure handy for seeing what's out there. I wish more automobiles (local) were listed online.
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However, there's one thing I still can't find: Maps that compare average home/acreage prices throughout an area, or (preferably) countrywide. I've tried everything: Census, real estate pro sites... nothing. Can anyone offer some help?
Thanks,
Tom Geller
Tom Geller
Heh.. I too am in the CNY area (buying a house in Bridgeport).. Try www.cnyhomes.com.. They get the MLS listings the day they are put in.. I actaully did find the house I am buying through www.realestate.com, but that was before I knew about cnyhomes.com....
Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
... as opposed to the kind of boring place anyone can find and buy.
:-(.
Check out the pictures of houses in your price range. Write down the addresses of homes whose pictures appeal to you. Be sure to be on the alert for neighborhood characteristics (trees, ocean views, etc) that might be in common with a number of houses.
Physically visit the houses you like. If the neighborhood still looks appealing, go back to the real estate listings and look for more homes on those streets. (Ziprealty.com, which I recommend, makes this easy).
This may be better suited to dreamers like me than people who actually want to buy homes now, but if you do it for a while it will give you a good feel for the market, probably better than all but a handful of realtors. Then you can visit realtors with a well-informed perspective.
http://www.amazing.com/david/dream-house/ is my amusing take on the Los Angeles real estate market of a year or so ago. Sad to say, things have changed for buyers: They have gotten worse
D
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Ulp. What costs $50,000 would run you $350,000 in Southern California, and don't even think of Northern.
Nice site, though.
D
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Realtor.com is an exceptionally poorly designed web site in my opinion.
I've found that one of the most useful things to do is find a few streets you really like and search for homes on that street. Morro Drive in Woodland Hills is a nice example, as is Rambla Pacifico in Malibu. You can then visit the area and find similar streets (i.e. Castlewood Drive in Malibu). ZipRealty.com, as I said in another response, is excellent in finding things like this.
If you're a compulsive researcher like me, you'll certainly find it quite enjoyable to check through the listings. Remember, you're blowing a lot of money for this house; you really should spend some extra time to find one that suits your taste. From what I have heard, all but the best realtors around find this quite difficult.
D
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It works on two levels. One, the realtor may miss something you may actually like, even though it's not what you requested in the first place. We had a few of those.
Two, the realtor can find homes that match what you want, however the web gives you a quick way of looking up what (s)he's given you. Sometimes just looking at a pink house with a bright blue garage just doesn't cut it, you know?
I used MLS Online to search in Calgary. It can be used for Canada, and became an invaluable tool.
Here's an example of a home offering pictures.
And here's mine, come take a look!
In the end we ended up deciding to build a new home, but the process was there for the internet to help.
Vip
I moved out to california about a year ago. I went through teh usual lines got a job an the second task was finding a house. I tried teh usual, rent.net, yahoo.com, and local pages, . like la.org, such like that. there were many listings but what I realized was that I was looking at a very small portion of what was actually listed. even newspaper website when you search there classifieds, in some cases you get directed to rent sites and not the actual classifieds. anyone who limits themselves to just the net is really limiting their prospects, and in my expereince the only firms which place stuff on the web are large developers with huge overhead, ie more cost.
... that is hard to defeat. Realtors tend to not list hot properties so that they can sell them to their preferred customers (mainly people who buy investment properties but also for friends that they know are looking, family, ect).
Additionally, sold houses will stay listed. Why? Because when you inquire about a place that is sold, they can then make a pitch to you to buy another place after they "sadly" inform you that your place of interest is no longer available.
Sadly, this is a fact of life.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I work in San Francisco, and I telecommute from Tampa Florida. I found my Tampa house on-line from San Francsico using www.realtor.com. The agent had posted a 'virtual tour' that included some horridly distoreed 360 degree views, but otherwise the listing was very accurate and useful. I had my family check it out and after that I flew out to see it personally. Three weeks later I signed the papers and moved in.
All in all, it was a pretty good experience.
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
"It must be true, I read it on the Internet!"
A few weeks ago, HUD added some new houses to its listing of mortgage foreclosures that would be coming available. An error had them list my address as available for sale at about 1/2 the market price for this area. I had tons of people coming up to the house wanting to see inside and looking around the outside of the house. Many of them didn't believe me when I said that they had the wrong address.
The Internet is a good way of getting information out to a lot of people, but the accuracy of that information is often wanting.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
At least it is in a sellers market. Houses don't show up on MLS until after the listing realtor has offered it to 2-3 of his/her close clients. Once it's on MLS all of the realtors seem to get a head start vs. electronic updates to the Internet, and (the good ones) check for updates multiple times a day and call their clients.
By the time _you_ see it on the Internet, it's been seen in person by several prospective buyers. The net result of this is that the really nice properties are always under contract by the time you see them show up on the Internet, if they get to the Internet at all.
What's left is less desireable properties -- poor location, overpriced, poor condition, etc. And these tend to stay on the Internet for months at a time.
I just bought a house after my wife and I spent endless hours driving around looking at houses we found on the Internet. None of them was any good. We finally got lucky and got a great house that our realtor hadn't put on MLS yet. Without the realtor we would still be renting.
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
The Michigan MLS site is complete by law (except for Sale by Owner). All licensed real estate agents in Michigan are required to submit their homes for sale to the MLS database.
FP
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Absolutley correct. The web seems to promote a very do-it-yourself attitude, but sometimes you can't beat having a person who's been there before in the loop. When I bought a house, we went through a buyers agent as well, and it saved quite a bit of work. What a lot of people don't understand is not only do the agents have access to the latest houses to go on the market, they are also aware of houses that may soon go on the market.
We bought our house the day it went on the market. There's no way we could have done this without an agent (or without being extremely lucky).
In addition agents know a lot more about houses than most folks do. They know the history of a lot of houses as they may have seen them on the market, and also have access to when the house was last sold, and for how much.
My agent calls me to work on her website, and I call her to find me a house... we both realize that the other has skills in an area we do not.
Attractive properties remain listed on the MLS long after they actually close, because it works like an advertisement to those who read the MLS. Or like the signpost in the front yard with the little tag that says "sold", it serves no purpose but to advertise the agent's name and number for another potential buyer.
There's no perfect information source, not even MLS, and realtors are perfectly satisfied with that.
The only way someone could still believe it's for sale is if it's still listed in the MLS. Which, as I said before, is part of the realtor's game. n
I recommend a combination of meat broker and online sites.
Best sites:
ZipRealty.com -- for saved searches and search result display format
Domania.com -- for looking up the sale history of the house, neighborhood, etc.
Realtor.com -- has description with room dimensions. You can get the MLS # from ZipRealty, then do a lookup on Realtor.
local paper -- for their mortgage comparison chart, updated daily
These were invaluable not only for suggesting things to see, but letting me figure out what I DON'T want to see, and getting a good sense of what a house goes for in a particular town.
I wish these sites allowed a more sophisticated search, though, like "where TYPE is NOT RANCH and NOT MULTI". They clogged up my result set.
Worst part:
The online maps. After you drive around a town enough, you know the chunks where you don't want to live. It's very hard to get a good Big Picture from Yahoo maps. Get an atlas. Do drive-bys.
A buyer's broker sounded weird the first time I heard of it, but let's face it: the seller is going to pay a 5% commission, and it will either get split between the listing broker and the showing broker, or be kept entirely by the listing broker. It might as well be shared with someone who works for you. Many brokers have an MLS site that will send you daily e-mails on new search results.
I did all the footwork for finding a house, but she helped with negotiating, calling the fire department to check for buried oil tanks, recommending home inspectors (who don't work for the selling broker), recommending a floor refinisher, etc.
The drawback to online searches is they hit the web a few days after houses go on the market. Live brokers may know about them before the MLS listing goes out, and can show them before the world learns they're available. I just saw a "new" listing on zipRealty that I saw in person two weeks ago.
You can leave your contact info with listing brokers in your target area, and say you're working with a buyers broker but would appreciate hearing about anything their agency lists that fits the bill. We got calls on some nice houses a selling broker was listing that way.
Best technique for handling selling brokers:
One of you asks questions about schools, neighborhood, etc. while the other gets a good look at the electrical box or condition of the roof.
Happy hunting-
--tangram
MLS (Multiple Listing Service) offers a good cross-section of the market across most of Canada:
http://www.mls.ca/
Of course, no amount of web-surfing will get you the perfect house. For that, you actually have to go out in the real world, and deal with real people. Horror of horrors!
I take posession on the 15th of July.
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Twoflower
The firm where I used to work ( http://www.toop.com.au ) has got quite a system up: properties are added to the website before the first ad appears in a newspaper, ipix panoramas are on the website within a week of listing, you save your search criteria and get SMS/email notification when something comes in that suits you...
This took a pretty major rearrangement of the business systems, though. My understanding is also that the major real estate portals for Australia slipped up to begin with a few years ago, retarding the uptake of the internet when it was 'boomtime' -- expensive, late to update (auctions had been held by the time the property was on the website, in far too many cases) and crashed too often. Also, as has been noted, the web was meant to reduce middlemen, and agents resist _that_ idea for obvious reasons.
Essentially, real estate won't shift to the 'net until they gain more from it (exposure to potential buyers) than they lose (by slimming margins) and even then, the shift will be slow rather than dramatic because real estate is an area where people can't depend entirely on the virtual. A book from Amazon will be the same as the book from the local bookstore chain, but a house is a much larger purchase, and unique in location/design/etc.
Just my perspective on things...
Bottom line: First time buyer? Get a realtor.
Pete
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
My wife and I just purchased a new house ... we chose a realtor to deal with in the local area (one I had dealt with before) and started looking. I mentioned that we were also searching on the net for houses that matched our parameters.
... or there is something wrong with it that has caused it not to be sold (and probably wouldn't sell anytime soon).
... but it wasn't listed on the web sites (realtor.com, bairdwarner.com, etc) for 2 weeks. Needless to say, by the time the condo was on the internet, we had a contract and were out of attorneys approval.
The realtor informed me that, if a house is listed on the internet, it's either already sold
Case in point: Once we found a house, made and offer, and had it accepted (with an "A" contingency) we put our condo on the market.
Our condo sold within a week
m
Um. No.
If a wealthy someone wants to buy a house in some pastoral place they don't need the Internet to do it. They call up the local broker and throw an obscene amount of money at them, just like they have always done.
As for supporting local real estate agents or newspapers, since when did these groups move to the top of the moral support food chain?
Internet sites have major benefits over newspapers (better search, more info, maps) and have some benefits relative to a realtor (self-directed). In the near to medium term, the Internet will likely support the real estate agent and not supplant him or her. In the long-term, we'll see.
JCS
I found my last house on Picket Fence Preview It is a for sale by owner oriented listing, and they are specific to Vermont, New Hampshire and parts of New York. I had a great experience buying... and will definately use them when it comes time to sell my house.
Celebrate Excellence!
And due to the fact we live in a supper hot market it was pointless. By the time the homes made it to the online sites all of the 'good' homes were already under contract.
At least in the Maryland market we couldn't find a way to access the MLS listings as they were entered in the the database.
We ended up going with a broker and found a great house and put a contract down on it the day of the first showing. As did 3 other people, but we got the contract anyways.
So if you live in a market or want to buy a home nobody else likes that takes weeks to sell you can use the internet. Otherwise you need a broker to get you in a house the first day on market.
Later,
MarkV.
I also bought a home from eRealty Since I lived 4 hours away from Austin the email notification and the slick website really helped a lot.
Pros:
1. Email notification the day it comes on the market
2. 1% cash back for buyers. Reduced % for sellers
3. Nice agents show you around to the houses you select to look at. They give you advice and help with the paperwork. They are salaried so they don't hassle you.
4. The searches/notifications are as specific as you want them to be. I was looking for a three bedroom on the north side of town. That's all I ever saw.
I highly reccomend them, from personal experience.
Cons:
They are set up in limited locations. No good for you if they aren't where you want a house.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human.
In the Netherlands there's the website run by the branch organisation for real-estate agents, www.nvm.nl. On it you can find nearly any piece of residential or commercial real-estate currently for sale or to let in The Netherlands.
Mandatory for membership is that a member shares his/her listings with the other 3000 members. Combined with a range of statistics about the region this gives you quite a good picture of a local market.
This listings network is also what makes it quite difficult to avoid using a realtor. But that makes that most people sell by their homes via a realtor in Holland, and nearly everyone also buys with a realtor. A Buyers agent knows the area, is experienced with the information gathering processes. He/she can tell you that that nice open space at the backyard is in the process of becoming a high-rise development zone, that the small crack you overlooked in the wall will most likely continue to grow, because of the high subsidence in the area and not all foundations were made equal etc. That experience is invaluable. You will most likely only buy a handfull of homes during your lifetime, and will look with different eyes at a house, then a professional agent. You see yourself working in the lovely study with a roaring fire in the fireplace, the agents points out the milldew in the corner. Your agent can tell you about the schools, shopping crime-rate and trends. Are a few unmaintained houses the beginning of the down-fall of the area, or the last vestiges of the renewal of teh area? Of course you can find out such things yourself, but not nearly as easyly nor as quickly. The fact that you've always lived in a home doesn't make you an expert, just like driving a car doesn't make you a mechanic.
If a trainstation is the place where trains stop, what is a workstation?
A real estate agent in a local area is the one who will know the neighborhoods, crime areas, shopping and schools, churchs, and so on. She'll know the dirty little secrets that it's not politically correct to mention in an ad.
I just bought a house and started with the Internet sites you've also found and it gave me an idea of what I could find. Mind you, just an idea. When I talked to a realtor, he took me to a few houses, briefed me about the location, and showed me the house I finally bought. The house had only been listed for three days and was not on any of the Internet sites yet. I might not have ever found it if he hadn't shown it to me.
Don't forget that these guys do this day in and day out. There are good ones and I'm sure some bad ones as well. You wouldn't suggest that people should write they're own programs by pointing and clicking--they should hire a professional. You should do the same.
I did something similar - I was ready to purchase a home but was in school M-F 1800-2200 hrs and Sat from 0600-1800 on top of my regular job. My realtor was able to give me a list of houses to drive by and look at within a few days of my initial inquiry. I used the basic elements of these first 5 or so to give her better requirements and refine the search. I spent 2 Sundays looking at 12 similar places in the area. I ended up with a house that I like a good deal (in retrospect its just a tad small with guests that seem to always show up when you live in FL). Once I found my house she was able to do a lot of the necessary pre-closing stuff from price negotiations to inspections etc. She was able advise me on what to make my first offer at and what my max offer should be before I looked some more.
This is a site that has listings for sale by owner - there are local sites like that as well (e.g. http://www.fsbomadison.com/). Happy house-shopping!
>Just use a buyers agent, they work for YOU not for the seller
No, they work for the commission, same as any other agent. The buyer-agent agreement means they can't also represent the seller, but it doesn't obligate them to put your interests above their own. If there's a problem, such as your realtor misrepresenting the property, lying to you about whether the listing is legally binding (it's not), or just plain not paying attention to what you want, the agreement mostly obligates you to stick with the idiot instead of getting another agent to handle the deal *competently*.
A good realtor can be a lot of help, a bad realtor can be a disaster. In either case, get a real estate lawyer to look over the deal before you sign anything, including a check! Sure, the lawyer's in it for the money too, but he gets paid whether you buy the house or not; the realtor only gets paid if she convinces you to buy.
I know that I found the realtor that I used to just go to contract via the net, and I looked at a LOT of houses (Including one I made an offer on) via the net. The house I'm buying never made it to the net.
The thing is, I knew the exact areas I wanted to buy in, and could weed the listings on Realtor.com close enough that 90% matched the area. That lead me close enough to email my realtor to say "setup a showing"
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
You mean Manhattan (I can tell by the brokers you listed)
I found the Realtor.com did a good job out in Queens. It seems there are 2 MLSs dealing with Eastern Queens, LIBOR, and I forget the name of the other. Talking with the agents, even thier "In House" stuff delas with these 2 MLSs. One is dieing, as there system sucks, the other gets the info to the brokers FAST, and also puts the info right into realtor.com
The BIG problem in Eastern Queens right now is that the market is VERY hot, and most houses go before they make the MLS system!
An example - I'm in the middle of buying/selling. The house I bought was on the market 2 days, and was MLS from the first day. The house I'm selling, the agent asked me to let him have a 5 day exclusive (aka, NOT on the MLS system) - The house was gone the 2nd day of showings, and I had multiple offers
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Exactly.
A buyer's agent will do the research for you.
A really good buyer's agent will interview you to figure out what you're looking for and what aspects of a house are important to you and then visit every property in your targeted neighborhoods and price range and then take you to visit the best canitdates in a really efficent tour.
I tried looking at houses on my own and quicky learnd that 80% of the houses I visited were really disapointing, overpriced or not anywhere I would want to live. My agent more than earned his money in the time savings.
- bridgette
If you're thinking of moving to Canada (or within) www.mls.ca is a pretty comprehensive listing. As far as I can tell, this site lists all MLS (not exclusive) listings in Canada. I'm not sure how the realestate market works in USA or elsewhere. Here, almost all listings are put in the MLS system, so a site like this works pretty well.
I just got back from my home inspection on a home I found via the Internet. I feel that sites like realtor.com are great as general guides, but they are definatly NOT up to date at all. Every single house we asked about on those websites was sold, pending sale, or off the market. Looking at those sites give you a really good idea what you can afford and provide realistic expectations for what that price will include however. Looking at those realtor websites gave us a good idea what neighborhoods we should look in/can afford. We actually ended up finding a for sale by owner by checking out the website of our local paper and reading the classifieds via the website (we dont get the daily paper).
Malice95
Yes. I've found them to be rude, hostile, and insulting. God forbid you should just buy a "FSBO" sign in a hardware store. The Realtors[tm] act like you're imposing on them by buying and selling your own property.
And I would join you in your lack of surprise.
The Realtors[tm] add virtually no value to the process. The only competitive advantage they have is in keeping the MLS read-only to everybody but themselves. And without being on the MLS, my experience is that no Realtor[tm] will even consider looking at the house.
I found that the realtors are incredibliy hostile and will do their best to steer people away from a "for sale by owner" house. The realtors realize that their 7% commision is in great danger if buyers and sellers can find each other. I would not be surprised if Realtors were actively trying to shut down home listing sites.
So I guess I have searched a lot and haven't found anything useful in terms of rental and real estate stuff.
IANAL, but I play one on
My realtor was on the ball and gets the internet. Each day I would get an email showing me which properties were new to the market, which had gone under agreement, what sold and what it sold for. If I wanted to view a property I could click on the link, enter my password and view the listing sheet on her website (which pulled the info from MLS.) All she asked is that if I wanted to visit a property I would call her first.
This is what e-business can do for a savvy real estate agent. It wasn't a fancy site but it was useful, informative and, more importantly, convinced me to work through her because it was just so easy.
btw. I hate it when people say "real-ator".And "nuke-ular". Makes me twitchy.
Best Slashdot Co
Strangely enough, I actually found the house on the net, but I had my realtor do all of the dealings with the seller [who was a realtor themself].
The first realtor I had [or thought I had, as the case may be] was a complete asshole. I had just moved into the area, and was taking a new job, which I was supposed to get the formal acceptance call that week. [I had already gotten an informal acceptance]. My mother, however, had recommended him as someone who had experience with HUD homes, as she had used him for a VA home.
Being 24 and just starting a new job, he wanted nothing to do with me. I'm guessing that my asking him about what would happen if I significantly underbid the asking price didn't help, of course. Unfortunately, there was a limited bidding window, and he wouldn't return my calls, therefore, I missed the window. [And the house went for $85k, $30k under the asking price].
I found another realtor, and went did the whole house hunting thing. There were a few decent homes, but nothing anywhere near a nice [nice being relative, as it was a definate fixer-uper] as the house I had lost. As I was also looking on the internet myself, I found out a house on the internet that sounded remarkably like the one I had lost out on. [right street, number of bedrooms, size, detached garage, etc] Unfortunately, there was no picture or street number.
My realtor managed to look the house up on her system, and we found out that it was in fact the same house that had been up for sale by HUD the month before. After my realtor went through a lot of crap in trying to get to view the house [I found out later that they actually buy the house from HUD 'till a couple of days before they turned it around to me, even though the whole process took a few months].
Over those months, however, my realtor did all of the harrassment work. We made them do some repairs before I took possession. Although I did something rather abnormal [I had about $5k of work done _before_ I owned the house, so I could get the loan approved, which is another story].
I got them down to $105k, with them giving $5k in closing assistance, and they had to do a few assorted repairs [electrical, plumbing, heating] before I'd take posession.
In all, it was many months of headaches, and I spent more than I would have if I didn't have the original asshole realtor, but in the end, I did get the house that I wanted, and I would have gone crazy if it hadn't been for my second realtor. There is no doubt in my mind that if it hadn't been for her and my checking various web sites on my own that I wouldn't have gotten the house. [And technically, her cut got paid by the seller, not by me]
In all, I spent about $113k [with closing costs, etc.] and the house appraises for $148k, less than a year later.
Get a realtor. I'm gussing most of you, even if you change your own oil don't lube the transmission yourself. [a car being the second most expensive purchase you'll own] And you wouldn't let someone who's never used a computer upgrade yours [third most expensive]. So why would you risk messing up the most expensive single item purchase you'll make to someone who doesn't know what they're doing? [that being yourself]. Get someone who's a liscensed realtor in your state, and let them work for you, even if you are looking for possible options on your own.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
If anyone needs Toronto area real estate services look at www.marionfuller.com
that site is really useful for mortgage information and anything else, all FREE!
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." -Groucho Marx
HomeCounSeller.com
Wisconsin only, pretty new site. Has FSBO and MLS Listings and allows people to place thier home up for sale. But, all sales are done off-line. Yes I am bias, I worked on it.
When we moved, the area we moved to did not have MLS. So, it was impossible to find anything online in the area. However, most of the stuff for sale was listed by all the realty agents in town.
On another topic, why is it that online displays of houses often are missing pictures? The same could be said of anything sold online, but for something as important as a house I have to wonder. Compared to the commission a realtor will get, would it really cost that much to get a digital camera with decent resolution and shoot some good pictures, inside and out?
I'm not a journalist, but I play one on slashdot
I've been trying to look for places on the web where you can search for homes by acreage. I can't seem to find any. Does anyone know of sites that have this option?
I know I'm leaving driblets of my personal life all over the net, but I sign up for weekly emails detailing new listings that fit my needs, and monthly bank loan information. I also frequently check the sale prices of homes in my neighborhood. The last time I was looking (late '98), I ended up buying from a family-referred real estate agent anyway. I always seem to find myself going back to ReMAX or Prudential's websites. They seem to do a good job with their website. Sometimes Realtor.com.
What kills me is the fact that this is a niche industry that **BEGS** for ebusiness transformation through XML. I know that an MLS in Michigan is 1 of less than 5 in the nation that use what appears to be the premiere XML-based MLS, I believe it's called OpenMLS. I recall seeing a website for a california realtor that puts their database up on WAP, so you can enter an MLS# in your WAP phone, and see all the details on the place, or schedule an appointment.
Only slightly cooler than the 1mw AM radio stations they put in some houses.
--
Steve Jackson
Intelligent Life on Earth
What advantage does a realtor have in spending time (and thus money) to put ads up on the internet? How much more money are they really going to make by selling to someone out of state/country?
I've been looking at homes lately and over half the ones I've looked at have been homes I've found on the internet. It's not about selling to people out of state, it's about getting people in-state to look at your homes.
Personally, I would be very concerned about buying a home over the internet
I don't think anyone is buying a home over the internet (yeah, charge that home to my Visa), even ebay says that the bids on their real estate auctions aren't binding.
Real estate websites like realtor.com and homebuilder.com are a lot more convenient than the local papers when it comes to finding homes that match your criteria and that's why they're used and that's why I hope they continue to exist in the future.
Has a lot of good real estate statistics, but it's limited unless you pay. They're geared towards real estate professionals.
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
While house hunting last year, I used a realtor and these three sites:
homesdatabase.com, which I feel has the most up-to-date listings;
realtor.com, mostly up to date, and has some good neighborhood statistics, and
homeseekers.com, least up-to-date (IMO), but does have nice maps from which you can extract the street address (just open in a new window and check out the URL)
Why peruse the sites AND have a realtor? because the sites' listings are only as good as the last update from the MLS system, whereas the realtor has direct access to the database. My realtor found the listing for my current house which had been in the MLS system barely 45 minutes before I went to see it. I put a contract on it 15 minutes after that: real estate inside the beltway is a fast-paced sport!
In my experience, the sites were useful for checking out neighborhoods, getting average prices and gleaning other info that doesn't change quickly. The listing for my house showed up on the web sites after I'd made the offer, so if I hadn't had someone looking into properties for me, I would would not have been able to act in time.
Buying or selling a home without the help of a knowledgeable real estate agent is like going through a divorce or other lawsuit without the representation of an attorney. The area of real estate is so over regulated (done to protect the consumer
Of course you have to pay a commission to this person but would you rather open yourself up to litigation by the people you bought a house from or sold your house to? I know I wouldn't. It doesn't mean I like the way the system works but you have to accept it.
Leaving legality aside for a moment, real estate agents have a huge amount of marketing power that the average smuck doesn't. They can get your house in the MLS and many publications that you don't have access to. They also have experience at selling houses. They know what it takes to transform a property into a something a buyer will walk in the door and want. You may like purple walls but to a potential buyer it could be enough of turn off to make them walk away.
I guess my point is, don't knock a whole profession because of a few bad apples. Of course there are bad realtors who charge too much and don't do enough but how would you feel if everyone judged the IT field by the actions of Microsoft? Ya, I thought so.
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Scott Brady
One of the real benefits of on-line real estate shopping is the ability to get a sense of what kind of homes are available in an area of the country that you may be considering for career reasons. For example, I am currently evaluating San Diego, Western Pensylvania and New Hampshire. The quality, size and price of homes available in these areas is quite different. San Diego is about comparable to here in the San Francisco Bay area, more value for the money but generally within about 20% comparable. The East coast options however are very different and make such a move much more apealing than it originally seemed. For the price of a stucco tract home of about 3K sq ft here on the west coast, in thes particular areas you can have three to five acres with up to 5K sq ft.
Being able to "shop" on the net was much more effective than cold-calling realitors who immediately try to "lock you in" to being exclusively represented by them. Some realtors have embraced the net and put up very effective web sites requiring some level of registration but then letting you browse Multiple Listing Service database. The most effective use ( for the realtor ) of this had a middleware layer that prevented me from getting the actual address of the listings except through the realtor ( unless you saw the very tiny MLS ID number for the listing and used a different service to get the raw data ) That realtor then offered a database agent service which continuously sends new listings which meet my search criteria via Email. I get about 10 - 15 listings a week from the agent with no personal overhead by the realtor themselves.
I think that real estate is definitely one area that the internet has enhanced the power of a buyer to deal with what used to be a proprietary market.
enough is too much
I found my http://domain.com.au very usful - assoicated with Fairfax press in Australia, they have all the real estate ads, on line, and are searchable by location, price, type etc. It was a great tool for getting a list of properties to inspect, and getting the home buyers early start on a Saturday. Using this method I could easily generate a shortlist for a dozen or so houses to inspect each week.
Once a house was chosen, it was back to using an agent & solicitor. To buy a house you need to be there in person to get the best price; there is a whol psychology involved, with the agent playing the both sides of the fence...
One of the key pieces of data missing from most web-based real estate searches is a precise street address. Without the address, you're stuck relying on the hype entered into the system by the listing agent. You can't drive by and see if you like the neighborhood, or if the house in question is a wreck despite the supposed features, etc.
Keep in mind, too, that those listings are put in by the seller's agent. If you don't have a real estate agent of your own, you're at the whim of the seller's agent, who will collect both sides of the commission when the property sells. For this reason, I'm more comfortable with someone who's working for me and not for the seller.
Plus, you'll probably need a realtor to set up appointments to show the property: most selling realtors and/or homeowners don't want the general public tromping through their for-sale home. This weeds out both the uncommitted browsers and the merely curious.
You're probably going to want a realtor to handle the actual transaction for you when it comes time to buy. Have you ever read a real estate purchase contract? Sure, a lot of people blow it off as a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo and boilerplate, but we're talking about tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in play. Don't you want a trained professional on your side?
Remember, too, that when you're buying, you don't pay your realtor a dime. That's the seller's problem. So why not use their services?
My last tip on choosing a realtor: take advantage of referrals from family, friends, or colleagues. Real estate agents are just like travel agents: they've all got the same products, what distinguishes them is how hard they'll work for you.
-Sharv
p.s.: IANAR (I Am Not A Realtor), I'm just impressed with the job my realtor did for me, compared with the poor results and incomplete data I got using some of the websites listed in the story.
Two weeks may be the general policy, but there must be exceptions.
I know there is definitely some delay, but the house that I bought was listed on realtor.com about four days after it was listed in the MLS service. The only reason I know when it was listed in the MLS service is that our realtor gave use the MLS printout that says "for realtors only", which had a whole lot of useful info on it.
I think they will have to be real-time with the MLSs to really start to be useful (at least in hot housing markets).
PropertyFirst.com.
:)
Yes, I know this is off-topic from real estate.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Or like the signpost in the front yard with the little tag that says "sold", it serves no purpose but to advertise the agent's name and number for another potential buyer.
Well, it also serves the purpose of stopping other realtors and prospective buyers from wandering through your yard if you've just bought a house... It should usually stay up for a week or two after you've bought the place for this very reason.
The net is indispensible, and largely removes the realtor from your searches.
We used realtor.com for the most part. Basically, if you just call an agent, they're not going to listen to what you're looking for, and they're going to take you to things that they have listed and want to get rid of. They're salespeople, after all. They will also want you to sign an "exclusive" agreement stating that you will not use any other agents for a period of time.
What we would do is search realtor.com and harmonhomes.com (a local to CT site, which unfortunately was recently redesigned to the point of uselessness) and find the things that specifically fit what we were looking for. We would print out maps to them (a feature on realtor.com), and drive by to see if it was something we'd like before ever calling the agent.
If we liked it, we'd call the agent and they'd take us out to look at it. Only once was the "exclusive agreement" brought up, and we insisted that it be a 24-hour agreement. Don't get roped into anything else, although I understand that these things are indefensible legally.
This saved us a lot of time, kept us away from realtors as much as possible, and found us our dream home, which we just closed on last week.
One more bit of advice -- get your mortgage through a broker, not through a bank. Mortgage brokers *only* deal with mortgages, so they're not distracted by everyday banking things, they can give you a boatload of options rather than the bank's 1 or 2 options, and they can often get you approved more easily, since they deal with a lot more mortgages than just one, so your mortgage becomes part of a "package" where millions are borrowed rather than a couple of hundred thousand.
I guess I can comment on this since I'm looking to either rent or purchase an apartment in NYC. And lemme tell you something, it ain't fun.
There are three things you need to deal with in searching for a place online:
1. dis-information
2. scams
3. horrible sites with horrible query functions
You'll find places on the 'net that sound too good to be true... mainly because they are. After calling the # that you find in the Village Voice online, you realize that this is one of those services that although they don't charge a broker fee, requires you to pay $200 upfront for nothing.
So you turn down that... instead finding a site that has some great pictures with great descriptions... of course it was taken 3 weeks ago because the market moves faster than they have the time to put the information on the web.
And then there are just the really crappy sites. I've almost submitted proposals for work offering to make their sites better looking and more functional if they'll just drop the 15% broker fee (that's quite hefty since it's 15% of the total yearly rental which for a small 1 bedroom rental will equal about $3000+).
Searching for real estate online is just like searching for anything else. You have two choices: go to the main players in the space or be prepared to follow a lot of shitty links to a lot of shitty phone service. Once in a while you'll get a gem, but often you'll get crap.
If you're in NYC, try using www.bellmarc.com or www.corcoran.com Nice pictures, descriptions, and brokers, but their prices are higher... or, one of those gems that I found is a woman named Sophia that works at www.getapts.com (tell her I sent you)
Just like everything else, dilligence is necessary... and sometimes you just need to get lucky.
A good buyer's agent will catch things you wouldn't even think of, and take care of all the details that you don't want to. There are dozens of forms that (by law) have to be filled out for a real estate transaction.
Do your initial searching on line if you like, but be sure and get a pro to close the deal. Theres too much money on the line to take that kind of risk.
I couldn't agree more. Real estate transactions, especially home purchases, are a personal affair. Putting the sterile medium of the Internet in the middle of it does nothing to facilitate the process, except perhaps to help winnow the initial choices. And that's only if you're willing to go after homes that have been on the market for a couple of weeks. Believe me, in this market, good homes rarely sit on the market for two weeks. A good realtor might even find you a house /before it ever hits the market/. They know people. People considering selling a house call them. That's how their homes get on the MLS in the first place. Even for an experienced homebuyer, the experience can be harrowing. If you've never tread these waters before - /use a realtor/. When you find out the furnace emits deadly levels of CO, what do you do? Do you know how to read a purchase and sale agreement? When you start to panic, where do you turn to get grounded? Is the sale price reasonable? Etc.
Know the difference between a buyers agent, a seller's agent, and a dual dislosed agent. Regulations about these things may vary according to region.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Take a look at http://www.jurock.com/ if you are looking for Real Estate in British Columbia, Canada. We've got thousands of current listings as well as lots of other Real Estate realted goodies.
I work in the tech end of the online real estate business. Our company pulls down data from foreclosure agencies (HUD, VA, FHA etc.) twice a day and after much reformatting and manipulation, reposts them on the web for all to use for free.
/.
We also upload our data to Homes.com which then is passed on to MSN Homeadvisor, Yahoo! Real Estate and others (we have people call out of the blue who saw the data on sites we've never even heard of).
Problem is, most of the major Real Estate web companies don't update their data nearly often enough to keep up with the market. I've seen properties on MSN that have been off the market for months that have a "newly listed" icon next to them.
--shameless plug--
Try going over to USHUD.com and check properties there. It's FREE, you do NOT have to sign up or give away major bodily organs to look at the listings.
And heck, we even read
--end shameless plug--
I am buying a new house in San Diego, Property taxes are about 350 a month on a 300k house, oh and its only 1882 sq feet, and by backyard in all of 15 feet deep.
.sigs suck, thus nothing here.
Real estate is a clear example of the old economy doing everything it can to prevent the new economy from tearing up the walls they have built around themselves. The data you need when you buy a house is already out there, databased and networked, you are just not allowed to see it, because they are scared of losing their jobs. Inevitably, it is going to break open. Sellers will find a small trickle, a path to run around the dam, and it will explode. The smart people in that business need to be positioning themselves in the way of that flood. Realators really are a valuable service, but they don't know what kind of house buyers want, the buyers do. Connecting buyers directy with those listings is the only way to go. If the Real Estate organizations wont let go of their listings, alternate listings will be set up.
In Iowa, there are Iowa Realty and First Realty for searching for homes.
...but I found the net useful in my recent search because www.upmystreet.co.uk tells you average prices in a specific area. This told me where I could afford. Then it's into the car, off you go and look at the place in question.
If I liked it, buy some local papers, and wander about noting names of local estate agents.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
This is a decent site. http://www.fsbo.com/ It is a little thin. However, it is "For Sale By Owner" - that eliminates the Realtor.
Yes. In ``hot'' markets, desirable houses will often go on sale and be sold before they even have a chance to get listed on the Internet. If you want a good chance of getting a nice house, a realtor is highly desirable (however, locating a good one may be problematic).
Also, in California, at least, it's the seller that pays for the buyer's realtor. It doesn't cost the buyer anything, when the seller is using a realtor to sell their house (which is the usual case). It can be an issue if the homeowners are bypassing the realtors and are selling the house themselves, however.
Another reason to use a realtor is that they know the area. This is very important when you, the buyer, are unfamiliar with the area and are unaware of potential problems. For example, many Californians are unaware of the radon gas issues elsewhere in the country.
My company does the computer support for a large Realtor in Ann Arbor Michigan, and from what I have gathered from observation and inference is that the area Boards of Realtors don't want you to look for homes yourself. The software for each board is different. The Ann Arbor area uses NetMLS from interealty corp. The Jackson and Livingston county areas use software called PCAccess but connect to different servers. The software or access to the databases stored by the each areas board of realtors is very expensive and all only Windows based. Even the so called web based NetMLS requires IE 5.0 and can only be used on Windows based machines. I can't see any of the boards desiding to get together and make one database searchable by the common person. That would cut in on there profits as brokers.
I bought a new house last summer and I used Realtor.Com to do my preliminary search. Realtor.Com allowed me to search by geography, price, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, etc. This allowed me to create a short list (about 10 homes) that I thought I might be interested in. I printed the information about each home and then I visited each home and ranked them in order of preference.
Meanwhile, I still had a Buyer-Agent!!! The Buyer-Agent recommended several homes for me to go view. I actually did not choose any of her homes. The home I finally decided on was one that I found myself. However, my Buyer-Agent still walked through all of the price and improvement work negotiations (she got the seller to come down on the price and the seller did some basic maintenance to the house and some improvements), the phyical and termite inspections, and all the other sundry details of buying house.
I would not ever dream of buying a house with out a Buyer-Agent, but the Realtor.Com was a great additional tool in the process.
Actually, that's not true. Our house showed up on Realtor.com just a few days after we listed it. Perhaps some agents or agencies are slow in getting the information to Reator.com, but not everything on Realtor.com is two weeks old...
On of the best sites I have seen is HomeAdvisor. Pretty well organized and with good up-to-date information. Pitty it is from M$...
The MLS that the realtors use is updated much more frequently than the web sites. I imagine that it will be that way for a long time to come. Realtors pay a lot to have access to the MLS database. There are many homes you will never see (especially in the entry-level price ranges) if you only surf the web.
I used a great site here that was instrumental in me finding my current house.
The site is http://www.ottawarealestate.org
I like the fact that it is consolidated, i.e. I do not have to go to 50 different real estate agencies sites. This one is run by an association of real estate agents.
It's initial interface made Web Sites that Suck but it's a lot better now.
I am doing a site for listings locally, with the main goal of making it easy for the realtors to update the site to maintian current listings. Since starting this project i have found that most realtors in my area use Voyager product for their own software, which i plan to use simple ftp scripts to upload the exported data to my server. Simplicity at its best, or so I hope.
One of my friends is a realtor. He maintains that "noone ever bought a house over the Internet." The value of the Internet is connecting people with people. The Internet may be useful in advertising the sale, but it is the people that do the selling.
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47% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
My wife and I just closed on a new house last month which I initially identified online last year. Some of the Real Estate search engines are pretty good at giving you an idea of where to start looking. Still had to go through an agent before buying the house, but at least we saved a lot of leg work.
A few years ago, when image editing software was not so commonplace, I had a side job editing photographs for a real-estate agency. Their sales crew would load the images onto their laptops to help show prospective clients (this was before the Internet was as widespread). I was hired to remove rust spots, fix broken gutters, patch the bare spots in the lawn, fill holes in the concrete. The justification was that the images were really just to give an idea of what the house could look like, since the buyers would see the site anyway.
The big problem with most of the online resources is that they only list houses that are handled by agents. There are some very nice places for sale by owner (I just bought one myself). There is a website that just lists these, so that you can find some of what's available. http://pal-net.com/ I'm not sure how national it is, but it had a fair amount from western new york.
Then I found eRealty through a mention at Consumer Advocate Clark Howard's web site. The attractive thing up front was the 1% rebate at close (I did receive a check for $2,100 -- 1% of the $210,000 sale price -- within days of close). But I also liked the service itself.
eRealty has traditional realtors (working, at the time anyway, on salary, not commission -- a wonderful advantage for me, the buyer) who are Internet-aware (mine was, anyway; Cindy Morgan, BTW) as well as experienced realtors.
They not only provided cool search and alert tools via their web site, but the the person touch provided by my agent and, when things got rocky with the seller's agent (idiot), the regional managers kept the deal alive and made a potential disaster rather pleasant. These guys fought for me. (They even fought for the seller, who was in the process of be forclosed upon for non-payment of mortgage; they arranged a deal with her lender to keep her out of foreclosure until my financing was approved; then, they worked with my lender, DiTech.com, to secure my financing within 2 weeks of application).
I guess this is what I appreciated: eRealty provides traditional service with modern Internet tools.
eRealty.com - Highly Recommended
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-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
And more importantly near the telco CO for DSL, and/or in a neighborhood with cablemodem. :)
My suggestions:
http://realestate.yahoo.com/
dslreports.com
My experience with realtor.com (which has a very good site, BTW) is that a lot of times, the houses aren't taken down until well after the house is off the market. This could be the fault of lazy realtors (probably) or it could be the site or it's admin.
If I were to host a realtor I would require that houses be actively relisted after a period of 2-4 weeks. Having done work for a realtor on the web before, I can tell you that they're not interested in doing that, but if you make it a requirement they get a little more interested!
...Time is the best teacher, unfortunately it kills all of its students.
Look at how much the auto dealers complained when it started to look like cars might be sold directly over the web rather than through them, making their entire business model obsolete. Most auto companies then made sure that dealers were a large part of any online process.
To expect millions of realtors to submit to the Internet overnight is ludicrous. That's why realtor.com (homestore.com, stock symbol HOMS, yes I am an employee!) has a smart business plan... don't replace the realtors with the internet, get the realtors ON the internet. It may not be the case now, but I would imagine as realtors become more tech-savvy and the internet becomes even more entrenched in our daily lives, face-to-face contact with a realtor will not be necessary. It's probably possible right now with the right realtors and the right circumstances, just not very widespread yet. Online bids are coming soon...
Don't want to use a realtor? Want to do it all yourself? Okay, you can do it yourself independently right now, computers or not. But you simply won't get the exposure that you will with a realtor. Exposure = $$. That's just how the system works. Adapt the system, or overhaul the system. The latter would be extremely difficult and there'd be a lot of resistance.
Carl
Vote Libertarian
I've seen a few posts here already.
:) or liverpool, but can in Clay, NY. I also can tell that Manlius houses seem to cost over $120k, but Cicero can be bought for $70k
I believe this ask slashdot is not asking about buying a home on the Internet, but searching for one.
I've looked for price estimates and styles at realtor.com. These things are very useful in narrowing down lists of possibilities. It's also good for roughly judging particular areas. For example, I know I can't buy 10 acres of land in downtown syracuse (duh
My wife has wanted a house since about the day we got married. She spent about two years searching the internet and wishing we could afford the homes she saw on realtor.com (I'm still in school, so our budget is pretty tight). All of the ones in our price range were dumps. After we had given up the prospect of finding a house before I graduate, we got a reference for a good realtor. The first house he showed us was a nice little one that was exactly the price we had been searching for. He was able to get to know us a little, and found us something that fit our needs. The bottom line is, no computer algorithm has the reasoning power of an intelligent person. Also, since we are first time home buyers, he was a good point of contact for all of the little things we had to get done. We're closing on the place next week. For almost anything else, I'd just as soon shop online, but for a purchase that big, it was good to have a human interface. Just my $0.02.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
I'm not sure about all of the reasons given, but I can attest that, in *reality*, real estate on the 'net did not work for me.
;-(
e y-anyway, we'll see someone start doing this successfully if ebay doesn't figure out how to succeed at it first. I also believe that there is a place for realtors and that it may just serve to drive the commissions to a reasonable rate...
We put our home up on the net and paid relatively nominal fees to several sites claiming to market our home for us. We also contracted with a local realtor who was willing to adjust the contract so that we could simultaneously attempt to sell the home ourselves without paying a commission if we succeeded (most realtor contracts stipulate that you will pay the commission if you manage to sell the house yourself during the duration of the contract). Bottom line: we did get a few contacts from the Internet and classified ads, but we ended up selling to a contact our realtor found.
We also attempted to look for a home in our target area on the Internet, but also had a realtor. Based on my first paragraph, you should be able to guess how we found our home...
* I do believe that, once everyone has gotten over the shock of the dot-com-failures-that-never-had-a-way-to-make-mon
Mark
Well, yes but you can certainly do a good bit of research and shopping on-line first. If you're looking for a 4 bedroom house in a cetain community with a 3-car garage, you can find likely candidates, go drive by and look at the house, and then decide if it's worth going further. Better than the newspaper, where you only have a 3-line blurb.
check out this site. It contains a full searchable database of most MLS's in Washington State. It is particularly useful if you're thinking of moving near Pierce (Tacoma), King (Seattle/Bellevue) or Snohomish (Everett) counties. Unlike Realtor.com and other sites, it is made up of all the listings from the actual MLS. Many of the listings you find here will be on Realtor.com also, but, since Realtor.com is a subscription service (for Realtors), not all Realtors subscribe to it. But, all their listings have to go into the MLS. Hope that helps.
Yeah, yeah, I used to be a Real Estate Appraiser in another life...
No thanks. I don't smoke anymore.
This isn't 100% relevant to finding real estate, but you can see what other properties in the neighborhood have sold for so that you can tell if you're overpaying a property.
http://www.domainia.com
allows you to put in an address, a street, or a neighborhood, and you can see the sale prices of all real estate since 1987 to present.
You can see what the previous owner paid for the house if he/she bought it since then!
Ralph
I work on my mother's website, she's a realtor in Texas. Their MLS data is HORRIBLE! I think they said back in October that websites can actually display Texas MLS data, but our resource is a DBase one table file with 400+ fields from her MLS Windows application she uses. If you look at all of the independent sites in texas that are showing the data, you will see similarities, everything is caps, etc. All of the features and stuff are crammed in a big long text field with no way to delimit cleanly. I am currently working on moving it to a nice database to do the searching like realtor.com (but with working ft, this is totally a side project). I have no idea if working with MLS data is as much of a pain in other states or not. Once we get it out of the one table format (using a similar sql table with 100 or so of the 400 tables for interim), it will be much easier to work with. I've heard that MLS data is different state to state. Someone mentioned XML, that would be fabulous! However, they are not quite there yet.
It's very difficult to have one all encompasing real estate market.
It has to be split into different regions and sub-regions. I'm currently working on redoing a site for St. Louis real estate.
It's got a long way to go. We just bought out the parent company. I'd love to hear your ideas on making the best real estate site for a given area. What features are needed?
Your best bet would be to search for real estate in a given city.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Springstreet.com is great for finding apartments - they include floorplans for a lot of them, and list most of the features. The downside is, since they are supported by the apartment complexes, they only really detail about 1/10th of the complexes in the cities they have listings for.
I'm a little biased on this issue, since I'm currently working on one for some (North and West) Vancouver Realestate Agents (up here in BC, Canada (soon to be up at http://www.recommendedbyfriends.com ) . What I have noticed, is that there is no standard for how much information is included in online listings. Since the web is supposed to be a resource of information, what you often find on "MLS" (multiple listings service) sites is the bare minimum: Cost, squarefootage, address, #of rooms/ bathrooms. If your lucky, you'll get one picture too, usually of the outside of the house. The reason for this, I can tell your from experience, is simple logisitics: the webcompany/mls service, sends around one person to go take all the pics, and often times the current tenanant isn't home (no time to make special arrangements) and you end up with an outside shot only. This is because the person taking the picture has NO intrest in selling the house. What the realtors I work for have done is to take the pictures themselves with a digital cam once they list the property, since they have access and a rapor with the owner of the house. They then put up their own listings on their own site, with a link from the mls site to theirs. If people want more info on a property, they can get it at their site: pictures of all the rooms, nearby school information, ammenities etc. We get a really good response about our site from overseas clients that are coming to Vancouver to view realestate. The real problem, in my view, of online realestate sites is lack of content. Now is someone gonna buy off the internet without seeing it in real life? Not go through a realestate agent? NO WAY. There are some things you can buy over the net without seeing first in real life. A home is not one of them. Realize that buying a home is the most expensive purchase most people make. I want to deal with a person, not a machine. Online realestate sites are simply about advertising- its like putting out a newspaper ad, only with more info. People are still gonna call to view the house.
"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, now would it?' -Albert Einstein-
Any better sites for Austinites?
I use a local realtor's web site that publishes new property listings once a day. I then view specific properties in-person. Then I have my realtor fax me detailed spec sheets of the houses that interest me (obtained from the database all the local realtors have access to). Finally, my realtor arranges a walk-through of the houses I want to see. For some strange reason the detailed information in the realty database is not published online by any of the local realtors.
I would love to shop for my house entirely online (except for a walk-through as the last step), but that's not possible yet in my neck of the woods.
Interesting site, but their data (at least for where I live in Southern California) is way out of date. I bought my house over a year ago and it still lists the previous selling price.
Good concept, but relying on their data in an active real estate market could get you into trouble.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
I don't live their any more, but two good resources:
Houston Area Realtors Association (www.har.com)
The MLS database for Houston
and
Harris County Appraisal District (www.hcad.org/Records/)
a database of the appraisal district's property values.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
the site is here: www.loftsboston.com
The target audience for these properties tend to be net-savvy, so this clearly isn't representative of the market as a whole, but I think it's an indicator of where things will go.
circa75.com
It's Lover's Arrival, again with a Shakespearian styled comment that is whacked.
I don't think you could classify the Internet housing market as "immoral". We recently sold our house online, and guess who bought it? Someone from 3 counties over. They looked online, but only for houses that where near them. And, I bet, if you look at the logs on the webserver; you wouldn't find all that many out-of-state (or even out-of-country) people looking at my listing. People have a tendency to start looking in their local area if they need a smaller/bigger home.
Even without Intenet listings, if you have to move to a location for a reason (job, etc); you'll find a house in that area through the "normal" channels.
"liberty and justice for all those who can afford it"
Before the dotcom bubble burst, I was looking to cash in with one of those high paying jobs. While evaluating offers, I used a bunch of apartment finders to look for a place to live in the areas with those jobs. I know I got no where near the whole rental picture for any given region using these services, but I got a basic idea what was out there and what the market was charging. One thing I learned was that there no way I could afford to live in Si Valley. Yeesh! In the other areas,I was able to zero in on about a dozen places that I could live in very quickly. This was very helpful since if I had taken any of the offers, I would have had to been out there yesterday, leaving very little time to find a place to live. Still, I dunno if I would use an online realtor to shop for house. It's a much bigger commitment in terms of cash and time. With the wrong apartment, you can put up with shit for a year a lot easier than you can break away owning the wrong house. And, since a large part of the reason for buying a particular house is the neighborhood, it's make much more sense to rent for a year and get to know the place before jumping in. Oh, and one other thing with the online apartment finders, their selections tend to be skewed towards luxury units. No suprise.
I live in the DC area, and around here, none of the sites are a hundred percent useful. This is mainly because most good houses sell in a matter of hours, just in time for the picture to be getting on the net. In my case, though, the net did provide a great deal of help. I looked through a ton of houses on line, and found four that met my criteria. Then, my wife called the agents and asked what they had that was similar to those homes (which had, of course, long since sold). We picked the second realtor we talked to, and found a house with him the first afternoon we went out. Disclaimer - I work for a company that has done real estate internet development, so take it for what its worth.
Law is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained. -- Aaron Burr
Websites are better than the local newspaper, at least in my opinion. I can have my real estate site, the NVM site (sorry, all Dutch), search for houses within my price range, the selected number of rooms and the area. Now try to do that in a newspaper. In that way I get a good view of what's for sale. So I pick a house that interests me and then I contact the realtor who's selling it. No, I can't bid online, but I wouldn't want to do that anyway. Next thing to do is that what you need to do anyway: make an appointment to have a look at the house.
Woefdram, l'apprenti sorcier
my wife did a lot of leg work on the web.
She would give the MLS numbers to the realtor who would get us into the houses.
I would say overall "the net" helped but in other ways it hindered us.
Choices become boggling and you are very easilt side tracked (Honey look at this; 87 acres, 2500 room, 2 billion dollars.)
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This
Finding real estate online in NYC can be both a blessing and a curse. Most of the major agencies (and some of the minor ones as well) have decent to excellent websites. They tend to have listings that mirror their actual listings (or at least what they put in the NY Times or have posted at their offices).
The bad side is that there's no true MLS in New York City so if you're interested in online RE searches in NYC, you need to hit all of the individual agents sites. What a pain in the ass. Some agents in Brooklyn and Queens kind of pretend to have an MLS and work together but for the most part it's an ugly and painstaking process.
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There's one thing computing teaches you, and that's that there's no point to remembering everything.
--Doug Copland
We just sold and bought within the last year. We sold our old house using a service called BuyOwner. The have a magazine, web site (www.buyowner.com), do some advertising and give you a yard sign. By far most of our traffic was generated by the sign in the front yard. But we did get quite a few calls generated from the web site. They charge a flate fee (about 1500 USD). They will also set you up with a title company which is where all the paper work takes place. It really isn't that overwhelming. But the lesson I learned was check out the buyer first. She had a letter that said she was pre-qualified for financing. That letter proved to be worthless. She was still putting together the financing up to the day before closing.
We worked through a realtor to buy because many of the neighborhoods do not allow the yard signs. I also checked out realtor.com and found the house we ended up buying there. Realtor.com was handy for search by areas since we wanted to stay in a certain school zone. Though when we met with the realtor the next day she already had the house on her list for us to check out that day.
I usually check the listings on the Village
Voice website (http://www.villagevoice.com./) and
NYCApartmentRentals (http://www.nycapartmentrentals.com./).
For good
general information on renting an apartment (what
documentation you'll need, etc.),
have a look at this site:
http://www.nofeelandlords.org/
There are also sites in the uk too! http://freeflats.com
...but I've found Domania.com to be an excellent resource when it comes to finding information about pricing for homes. I can look up the prices for a house or even all the houses on a street. Their coverage is pretty good for where I live (Chicago SW suburbs), and I think they cover a lot of areas in the US, except for Texas because it's a non-disclosure state. Anyway, my wife and I have used it a lot out of curiosity, and since we expect to be buying a house within the next few years I'm sure we'll use it for real.
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
I'm not quite sure why something easily found on yahoo is an 'ask slashdot'.
I found my house, told my realtor I wanted to see it and bought it the next week. I wouldn't recommend using the MLS website alone (tried that for a week - I couldn't get an address of any houses without a realtor involved), but the combination of the two can't be beat.
I suppose it's also nifty if you grew up across the street from your realtor.
The site lists every house for sale in Canberra, usually with pictures, plans and detailed population stats (eg, number of people in postcode, number of schools, shops etc, distance to schools, shops etc). The best thing about it, is that you can get the sale price for every house in Canberra over the past 10 years. That way you can tell if the agent is trying to rip you off. In addition, you can view the sale prices of every house on a street to see how the property you are interested in compares.
This site has been so popular that all the real estate agents in Canberra have been forced to list on it. Great for the consumer!
Incidentally, having all the sales histories hasn't reduced prices growth. If anything, it is faster than ever. People now have some actual hard data to base purchase prices on so they know whether they will get their money back over time.
The nasty part about realtors is this. Unless you are in a buyer's market, those properties that you see online are usually days or weeks old. Under the Multiple Listing Service guidelines (at least in my state) Realtors can sit on a property for three days before ever listing it on MLS. This is a big drawback for people who are trying to find houses on their own. And of course, you can't get to the updated MLS service at all unless you are using a realtor--this is how realtors hook you to using them (read:monopoly). So, people who are using the listing realtor or agency as a buyer's agent are usually getting first dibs on properties you may never see (it depends on the laws of your state if this is allowed).
Now, of course you can save yourself the realtor fees if you attempt to find a FSBO property (as a buyer, you can approach a FSBO property with a realtor, but you'll be charged half commission). I bought my house this way, actually by word of mouth. But let's face it, FSBO only really works well if it is a strong seller's market, thusly, making the costs of publicity--through the local paper, on a local FSBO website, etc. well worth the frustration factor.
All in all, I would definitely buy FSBO again (you do need a good lawyer) but I wouldn't depend on online listings unless the real estate market was moving fast.
This is another view of the world.
I wouldn't be so critical about the MLS system if they had it set up that you could access it as a buyer without a realtor, but still work with the selling realtor (and they can go get their 3% or whatever). As it is here, this is a no go because dual agency is an allowed practice. So, whatever.
Finally, well duh that I don't agree with you. It took me 9 months, two different buyer broker contracts, and two prior failed bids to finally get a home (which was worth it). Believe me, I didn't feel one ounce of guilt when I started finally thinking of a FSBO home. I was kind of mad that I didn't think of it sooner.
This is another view of the world.
realestate.boston.com has a fairly comprehensive search engine, not only to find houses that had recently been listed for sale in the Boston Globe, but also to determine recent real estate sales in the same neighborhood, which may be useful to know when negotiating the price.
The question was asked if the net will replace real estate agents? IMO, probably about as much as it has replaced car salesmen (in other words, it won't). Even if, as a buyer, you don't want to deal with an agent, it's up to the seller of a property whether or not to go through an agent. At least in Boston, a prospective home buyer searching on the net will find that most of the bigger real estate firms (like Century 21, DeWolfe, etc.) have set up their own search engines.
check themls.com. The website is updated every two hours by the main listings database which is updated constantly by realators. If you find a house you like you must contact a realestate agent to purchase the house and to view it (1 or 0 pictures of the house on the site)
I wrote the code on that site which imports the database and the code that queries and displays the results.
fear is the mind killer
In some areas, Multiple Listing Services (MLS) make realtors sign agreements that they won't release MLS database information to individuals unless they are first a customer of the realtor - if the realtor violates this, then MLS will cut them off (and they're pretty much boned). This, plus the high expense of MLS subscription in certain areas like impedes the development of a definitive search site. Maybe in a couple of years...
The MLS service (at least here, I'm not sure about other locations) actually has the most powerful and useful web site that I have *ever* seen. It's a serious piece of work. The bad part? You have to be a realtor to get access.
Yes, it has a public interface - a vastly stripped-down version. The nice part is letting the agent do the searches *for* you, and emailing you the results each day. : )
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
At least in this part of the country, a seemingly common application for maintaining an area's multiple listing service (MLS) is using Technology Concept's Ultrex. (See, for instance, the Waterloo-Cedar Falls (IA) Board of Realtors and the Southeast Minnesota Association of REALTORS). The web sites are essentially a "web-ified" version of the MLS database. So this is probably your best bet for finding real estate on the internet.
Sites like REALTOR.com don't generally get updated nearly as often or as quickly.
Keep in mind, however, that in a lot of markets, agents can sell houses a lot faster than someone can enter them in the MLS database. My wife and I recently bought our first home -- doing so before it was even "officially" listed. It was never on the web, in the paper, or even had a sign. An agent will also have search capabilities in the MLS software that the web site probably won't provide. In most situations your best bet is probably to use an agent.
What about commerical real estate. I've been trying to find Wharehouse space to buy or rent for months and there are comparativly few commerical real estate listings versus homes.
Anyone have any ideas on finding resources for commerical property?
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
If you want to know how much a house really costs, find a site like this: http://www.oklahomacounty.org/coassessor/default2. asp
However, the reason why houses don't make it to the web listings is that the realtors have monopoly access to the MLS. Break those monopolies and houses will be listed immediately on the web, with pictures and better information, and commissions will go down Has anyone seen the MLS printouts? they are hard to read, no pics, etc..., an obvious sign that they are managed by monopolies with no interest in innovation and in sharing information
... and lower commission fees.
Just use a buyers agent, they work for YOU not for the seller. I worked with our for over a year, and I didn't have to pay a thing, they actually take from the sellers agent money; which is kinda funny when you think about it. If you don't use a buyers agent the seller keeps all of the moeny.
I'd NEVER buy a house without an agent, ours did our paper work, got showings setup, etc. we went to over 50+ houses in her car all over and it didn't cost us a thing. Saved me so much time and money covering all of the little loose ends, giving advise on appreciable houses, neighborhood history, they have to disclose to you any detracting information (highway is going in 2 years from now).
If that's not enough, try this when we finally found a house, put money down on it and later during inspection had some bad siding in areas, she did the negotiation for us (we told her we want this, she said OK I'll try to get that or better). Negotiations failed, seller still had our ernest money; that's when our agent became a badass. The same agency was representing the seller as was representing us, seller got pissed that our agent was helping us more than his agent was helping him. He also was threatening to sue: us, contract inspector, siding company we got quotes from, others, if we didn't buy the house. We never talked to the seller, since our agent was doing everything for us, she got the constant calls from him (upto 10 in one day) for that week, she came over as soon as he started doing this to let us know in person and to say that pretty much he has no ground to stand on, and she'd take care of it; we would not have to do a thing (other than let our lawyer know what was happening). That day we pulled back our offer, she came over with the normal sheet of houses for us to look at and to start going onto the next house. The seller finally told the agency he wanted to drop them and go with another one, our agent chewed her way up to the top and got the head honchos to tell the guy that if he doesn't return our ernest money and stop threatening to sue us they just might stop running any adds or do any showings for him; and he couldn't jump ship since they were in an exclusvive contract with them for a few moths more. That pissed the seller off completely but it sure got the message across, he gave everything up. 2 weeks later we found a house and a month later we closed.
Actually they by law are working for you have are to properly represent you in YOUR interests; if not you have legal recourse against the agent. They by LAW are required to notify you whether or not it is legally binding, bad things about the property, they are charged with actually investing why the seller is selling (something bad), motivation of the seller, etc.
. ht m
And if you are *that* concerned with it, buyers agents can also be paid directly (hourly, or a flat fee).
Trying to go it alone, and it's almost list saying my dad who can run MS Office can do enough proper research in a couple of months to run a multimillion dollar unix environment with hundreds of servers and do it as well as any other admin who have been doing it for years.
If you want, an info page I found below with a quick google search. I've got my original contracts stating about actually being able to sue, etc. the agent at home if you want the legal speak.
http://www.exclusivebuyersagents.com/dfw/duties
You probably have a legal recourse, by LAW they have a fiduciary responsibility to the buyer (same as executors, guardians, etc) and MUST represent you properly. If you had that bad of an experience you might just chalk it up to the individual not the industry (such as a crappy Unix admin does not mean all admins suck). A buyer's agent does NOT remove the necessity for a lawyer, that's NOT their job, their job is to coordinate the mountains of paperwork, investigate why the seller is selling, how motivated the seller is, is there anything bad about the property (they are required to look into things like a new highway being build 2 years from now); they also have access to non-listed items (that's how we got our house, it was to be listed in the next couple of days and with a motivated seller got it 80k below other similar houses listed on our street, in a less desireable location). They are not a replacement for a lawyer, just like a lawyer isn't going to know the first thing about whether a property is in a spot likely to depreciate.
With people doing research on their own... They way I look at it is kinda like this: I need someone to come in and do a whole buch of unix admin work, all our admins are involved in other projects, we can't pull any of them off anything, we just need manpower to do this big project:
1) get a contractor who knows his shit in
or
2) get Bob from accounting who can do some windows things, he can do his own research for a few months to get upto speed on doing a Sun E10k domain cluster failover and have the vendor on the phone for help
You can get a bad contractor who's main goal is to make sure things continue to break (and he continues to get paid) just like a bad buyer's agent, but you do have legal recourses in both situations. I'd even say a buyer's agent has a whole lot more to lose, and in most cases will always work for you interests.
If you are that concerned about it, you can have buyer's agent also work without commision, either by a flat fee or hourly charge and you pay them directly; they know a hell of a lot more than you or I do (at least ones who have done it for more than a few months)
Check out www.exclusivebuyersagents.com/dfw/duties.htm
However, the way the market is in the Washington, DC area, by the time the house makes it up to Realtor.com, it is usually already long gone.
I really like the ipix pictures of home interiors with the 360 degree views.
My wife and I are closing on our first house at the end of the month. Our experience (IANARealEstateAgent):
The market in CT is a sellers market. We made offers that were above the asking price that were rejected because someone came in $5k, $10k, $15k higher than our asking price, all cash, seller allowed to stay in the house rent free for a certain amount of time after the closing, etc. Rediculous! Now, I'm not claiming that those buyers are necessarily going to get their investment back in 3-5 years, but still. The speed of the market is such that the web information is outdated too quickly.
We got a Real Estate agent. Regardless of your likes or dislikes for them, get one. My wife and I got very frustrated trying to track down houses listed on the web that we thought were interesting. Sure, the web is nice to use to get an idea of the market, but everyone takes pictures of houses at favorable angles so that you don't notice that the house next door is 3 feet away and that there's huge ugly oil tank in the back yard. Getting a good Real Estate agent will save you a lot of headaches. The house that we wound up buying went on the market, our agent called me on a Wednesday, and we made the offer the same day. Given the market, it wouldn't have waited until the weekend to be sold. That seems to be the current trend (in CT, anyways, and I suspect in many other parts of the country).
I believe that this is one area where the web has not successfully replaced or complimented a human. The real estate agents have much more recent data and can get a feel for what sort of house you are looking for. I have yet to see a real estate web site that understands that you want a quiet neighborhood with not a lot of traffic and neighbors who are likely to invite you over for drinks and watch over your house when you're on vacation. As far as I've seen, no web site can get that personal.
Looking for a house here in the Rural Western US, I have found a lot of house which have been on the market for up to six months but whose owners are unwilling to give an inch on the price. Perhaps, their ability to see what others are asking in other regions has given them a false sense of what their property is worth.
Of course, this should be equalized in time with buyers seeing that in another comparable neighborhood (even if it's across the country) houses are going for much less.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
The net has allowed people to sell and buy homes sans realtor, but much of the money being put into the Net in this market, as in all markets, is coming from the people who have the money in the brick-n-mortor side of the market.
I could go list my home on eBay with maps, photos, etc. and sell it that way, or I could list it in Yahoo! classifieds, but that won't rid the world of realtors. Nor should it.
I use the Net to find the property I like, and then get me in touch with the agent or seller. Buying land online is much differenty from buying a car or CD online. In these cases, you can go down to your local dealer/retailer and test out the merchandise, while with a home, you really must see it in person, and it won't come to you.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
sort of like Arpa Net when it was started. No university wanted to share their servers. (but they did government mandate. everyone had to be part of the network)
Here people focus more on the liabilities of putting stuff up on the net, vs the benefits.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
mls.ca is the best - I found it very useful.
We have just bought a home in Ohio, and two years ago bought one in Michigan. In both cases, Realtor.com has been a very useful tool to us; it's tied to various MLS systems used all over, and I believe data is shared between those systems as well. It's been a very useful tool to get an idea what homes are available in a given area, what their price range is, and even provides an MLS number to give to your realtor if you should spot something that your agent didn't tell you about. There may still be some regions of the country that don't have a computerized MLS system, and in that case, it won't help you much. You should still use an agent, however, as they can often find FSBOs (For-Sale-By-Owner) that won't show up in that system. It was also useful to get more readable information about a home using the very messy and barely readable MLS printout our agent sent us, by punching in the numbers and seeing the homes in living color. Of course, there's still no substitute for actually going an looking at homes, but this makes for a great way to start. Finally, it's important to note that realtor.com is the official home of the National Association of Realtors (which is a real national organization), and as such is probably the most authoritative. Good luck!
I can also tell you that ours appeared there the day after our listing agreement was signed. We were able to let our agent know about a new listing before she even did her MLS run that day.
Furniture.com, perhaps?
What advantage does a realtor have in spending time (and thus money) to put ads up on the internet? How much more money are they really going to make by selling to someone out of state/country?
Personally, I would be very concerned about buying a home over the internet, thus I'm not too surprised to find out that there aren't many people advertising the fact they're selling.
Local newspapers and periodicals have worked for many many years, why would one try to move it to the internet, when it's obvious most advertising-run ventures are barely (if at all) profitable? Subsidizing a website that's losing money just so you can "be on the 'net" is bad business.
People need to think about things logically from a business point of view, not the computer guy/gal view of "everything should be free and on the 'net." Business goals are often different from individual computer user goals.
And I'm not saying my statements or right or logical, just saying to think about these things from someone else's point of view.
terraserver.microsoft.com
Cool site for looking over an area. Not always up to date, but interesting.
Scott Plumlee
Also, if you live in the Philadelphia region, The Philadelphia Inquirer has their own classifieds with real estate listings.
Your reality is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. - Baron Munchausen
I was cruzzin the net today and found Gov. property in CA that I think would be nice to have...check it out.
r Sa le/ShowProperty.ASP?PropertyID=299
r Sa le/ShowProperty.ASP?PropertyID=373
r Sa le/ShowProperty.ASP?PropertyID=11
r Sa le/ShowProperty.ASP?PropertyID=363
http://propertydisposal.gsa.gov/Property/Propfo
530+ farming acres for only a couple mil...not too bad.
Here's another in NV (the thing that kills me is how the gov classified this one's "type of property = LAND" duh!)
http://propertydisposal.gsa.gov/Property/Propfo
Here's a small Army missile construction plant (if you're in the market)
http://propertydisposal.gsa.gov/Property/Propfo
How about a "lightkeeper's dwelling" in Michigan?
http://propertydisposal.gsa.gov/Property/Propfo
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
Blarf.
Pretty good and quick search engine for Bay Area homes is www.baymls.com --Although I could get it to find any houses for under $100,000. Strange, huh?
Many people look at the fees a realtor gets and think it's a big rip off. Let me give you my thoughts on why it is not. In fact whenever I see a house with a "For Sale By Owner Sign" I think "for sale by idiot."
A Realtor is licensed professional whose job includes knowing all the law and rules regarding buying and selling real estate. ALL of them. Anybody who has ever spent time dealing with a bureaucracy and found themselves going through the line again for the lack of *one* crucial document should understand the value of this. They want you to suceed in buying or selling property, because if it doesn't go through they don't get paid!
The next important thing the Realtor is good for is knowing the local market. They know which schools are better, which neighborhood is best for people who like to walk/bike/whatever, and where they are planning to build the new 24 hr megasuperhypergammamart. They also know and can tell you things like "This isn't the first time that house has been on the market. The price has come down but you might be able to get them to accept a lower bid." Try getting that off a website.
The final reason I respect realtors is that the good ones (and yes I know there are bad ones) really want to do the right thing for you. They want to hook you up with a good mortgage company. They want to refer you to a good home inspection service. They know it is good for business and that if you are happy you will let your friends know.
-- I Am Not A Terrorist.
My advice would be to deal directly with the seller and hire a lawyer to walk you through the legalities and paperwork.
If you must deal with a Realtor, realize that they're there for exactly one reason--to get their commission. That's just as true for buyer's agents. Think used-car dealer.
--Mike
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Keep in mind that you can't sell real estate like other stuff you'd find at Amazon.com or eBay. It's one-of-a-kind every time, usually changes hands from one individual to another, and can't be shipped across the country. Real estate is, and will always be, a local endeavor. Because of this, it's hard to justify the expense of a World-Wide Web site. A few do. But no one, to my knowledge, sells real estate exclusively online for just those reasons, and so you'll never have as much success hunting online as you will with a personal agent.
Your best bet, if you must do this electronically, is to hit the online Yellow Pages and do a search for "real estate agent" in the location of your choice. A handful will have Web sites, but practically speaking, you'll have to settle down with some phone numbers and do it the old-fashioned way.
There is no "definitive" real estate site, as far as I can tell. Your best bet is to visit as many as you can, devote some time to it, & figure out what's best for you.
Just like the reset of life, there is NEVER an easy, all around, all encompassing answer. No matter what microsoft would like us to think.
After repeatedly taking time off work to follow my realtor throughout Wilmington, Delaware ( I don't think we have any screendoor factories) to look at various houses (all of which did not suit me) I decided to check out the local realtor websites. Patterson Schwartz lets you search all of their listings. Prudential Fox and Roach also lets you search, and even provides virtual tours of most homes. That's how I found my home. I found it online in the area I wanted, looked at the virtual tour to make sure I was interested, and told my realtor that's the house I wanted to see. The MLS (multiple listing service) number was provided as well. My realtor didn't need to guess at houses I liked, I didn't have to worry about any nasty surprises (The 2 bedroom 2 bath house where the second bathroom consisted of a pipe emerging from a cinderblock wall in an unfinished basement springs to mind).
The only drawback is that the realtor sites only allow you to search their listings. There is no real centralized web-accessible search page. You'll have to jump from realtor to realtor and hope they all let you search until you find what you're looking for.
For those of you wishing to rent, the rental sites www.apartments.com and www.apartmentguide.com (there are lots more) are searchable in most metropolitan/national areas, and many listings provide floor plans. They are also extremely searchable.
I still don't get why you'd want to rent in Philly. My mortgage payment is less than monthly rent in a 3 bedroom place in center city. Then you get to add on the $200+ a month for city parking. That's equivalent to a monthly payment on a commuter car. To each their own, I suppose.
Got a great piece of real estate for you. It's in a "100-year flood plain" and it just flooded so you're safe for at least 100 years! Of course, it flooded in '94 and '98 as well, so who knows. Actually, take your pick of land in Houston - there's a bunch of houses going really cheaply right about now. And if you'll take one of those, then I've got a great used car to sell you, too!
compared to searching for land. You would think to just look at the realty sites but...HA - you'd be wrong! Ever look for 5 acres with no bedrooms and no bathrooms? I do find it amazing that I can process a complicated trasaction involving lots of money for $8 - nothing for me to do but say "buy" or "sell". But a real estate transaction - if you want that to be pushbutton, it'll cost you 6% plus all expenses. Oh well, it could be worse. You could be required to find a Microsoft Certified Real Estate Specialist to process you transaction (although I shouldn't give Bill any ideas, he's got enough cash to buy most of the nation's legislators if he wanted to).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
But can I least express spketicism about this one?
digThisXL asks: "We've all used the Internet to search for real estate at one time or another.
I mean, I'm not taking offense at it but I have to smile at the assurance with which that staement was made...
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
I heard that www.homestore.com has something like 90% of all Internet real estate listings. The DoJ may even be investigating. I forgot the details though.
As far as buying online, you should always visit the house before purchase. Hire an engineer to check it out. Make sure it will be standing after you close the deal. Drive around the area. Check out the local schools to see if they meet your standards. Check on private schools. If moving to another state find out what the property taxes will be. In NYC it's not unusual for people to pay $200 PER MONTH for property taxes.
The only certainty is entropy.
It is also interesting to see how much the house your friend bought was, when it sold, and things like that.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
What we would do is search realtor.com and harmonhomes.com (a local to CT site, which unfortunately was recently redesigned to the point of uselessness) and find the things that specifically fit what we were looking for. We would print out maps to them (a feature on realtor.com), and drive by to see if it was something we'd like before ever calling the agent.
My wife and I did the same thing. From the online listings we compiled a fat notebook of potential candidates. we drove by the ones that looked most promising, and eliminated those that were in obvious crack neighborhoods, had extensive problems that were not described, etc. Only after this preliminary leg/Web work did we actually go to an agent.
As a bit of information, try Ocwen's web site. They specialize in foreclosures, abandoned properties, and other "distressed" listings. If you are cash poor and handy with a hammer, you can really save some cash by going this route. FHA and Fannie Mae both offer special package loans to rehabilitate broken houses.Ocwen also offers information about commercial sites.
(BTW, I am not associated w/ them in any way. I seriously looked at a rehab house when I was shopping, but someone snatched it right before our offer got made by our agent. But that, friends, is another story.)
dookdookdook
I don't know how things work in Canada, but here in America, high pressure tactics are considered to be unethical and illegal in the practice or real estate sales. Having just completed 120 hours of pre-licensing courses 30 of which were devoted exclusively to law; I came away with a new respect for the complexities and legal pitfalls of selling real property. The combined course material is over 1600 pages, and is barely an overview of the practice or real estate sales. Selling or buying your own property without expert representation is asking for alot of headaches, both legal and otherwise.
Before you go to sell or buy your own home, ask yourself these questions.
Are you a lawyer?
Can you take off work with little or no notice to show prospective buyers your home?
Do you deal with the loan officers of a dozen banks on a daily basis? Do you have any idea how real estate finance works or which loans or government programs would best suit your needs?
Do you help people buy and sell homes on a daily basis?
Do you know how to how to negotiate an offer and write up a valid contract that protects your interests?
Do you know a good appraiser, or anything about accessing the value of real property?
Do you know of a good title company and how to determine what coverage will best suit your needs?
Are you aware of the different kinds of interests and restrictions that go with different kinds of property ownership?
I could go on all day, but I think I have made my point. After all is said and done you might be able to anwser yes to all of these questions. You might not know, but have the initiative and intelligence to find out on your own. You could probably learn how to be your own architect, make your own soap, build your own computer, write your own compiler etc... But at some point or another, you are going to delicate some task to an expert because it is impossible to be an expert at everything and you only have so much time no matter what you do. Don't get me wrong, I plan on using the internet and automation myself, but I don't believe agents are going to be obsolesced by technology any time in the near future. If anything, technology will make the early adopters immensely more productive than their stuck in the past peers.
Actually, as a soon to be realtor, I can tell you that bundling of services like you describe is a fast growing trend. Current laws are not up to date on the realities of the situation, but the consensus is that they will be changing to facilitate consolidation of services while leaving the buyers and sellers free to unbundle and shop around. Expect lower prices and greater convenience, but don't expect less middlemen.
I f'ing hope not. Sorry to be so blunt, but they have totally put a bad taste in my mouth. We have gone through 2 agents to sell our still unsold house. One of them we literally didnt hear from for months, the other hardly does her job, and recently asked my sick with kidney stones gf to wait on the balcony in 90+ heat while she shows the house.....dolts
"sex on tv is bad, you might fall off..."
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
But I found that, while it was very useful in cutting down on wasted trips, it didn't find me any of my top 5 house choices. Even with virtual tours and online pictures and search databases that listed properties in the area I wanted.
Look, the thing is we all have different things that matter to us in a house. For me, location was important, and ambience, and closeness to a good school, and what kind of neighbors were there.
So, the Net did help me find lots of properties and figure out if I should check them out, and cut my search time in half, but the houses I really wanted I found by driving and walking around the neighborhood area I was interested in.
Because a lot of listings aren't in those large databases. The best was a local firm that listed all their properties with pics and had database searches based on price range and neighborhood, and also included ALL the MLS listings that were online as well, and any pics they had.
But one of the houses I almost bought was because a friend told me one of her neighbors was selling (it's a very nice set of townhouses in a wonderful location). And another was one I found by walking nearby my son's school. And the one I bought I just walked into cause it had an open house sign up and I was walking by.
Maybe, in the future, when we all have WAP cell phone/PDA/wrist watches I can just be driving by and houses in a 2 block radius will just advertise themselves to me, but for now it's a useful tool, but it's not the total solution.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
A couple of friends and I developed a site for credit unions called CU Realty (http://www.curealty.com) that handles everything from search (and yes, we provide addresses) to a service that helps you find a mover. Try it and give us feedback.
Francine Hardaway, Ph.D. "It's not what happens to you; it's how you come to it." http://www.stealthmode.com
I administer a number of local Real Estate, Real Estate Agency and Realtor web sites in my area (lane county, oregon). Including http://www.home-tour.com. Basically the problem is MLS, the company that handles almost all real estate sales, is run by realtors and they don't want to be left out of a job (and I don't blame them). Besides there is a lot of information available that a realtor might know that a individual might not. So almost all real estate sites make it a point to get the person to get a hold of a realtor when they are looking at a specific house. Also most of these sites are are basically advertising. Psyberian Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with.
On the upside, there are a fair number of genuine listings - you just have to be willing to wade through the spam, and not give into the temptation to respond to the realtors who are trying to deceive you into paying their fees.
OK,
- B
--
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
> I know there is definitely some delay
Funny thing, the slowiness of Yahoo listings worked to my advantage.
Both houses, bought in 1996 and 1998, were already sold when I found them. Well, to be precise, they were under contract. No agent shows their clients houses that are already under contract: it's a waste of time for them.
Both times, my wife and I were able to yank the house by offering better terms (but less money).
I don't think I will be able to pull this trick the third time...
I found my first house in 1996 on Yahoo Real Estate listings. I fouund my second house in 1998 on Yahoo Real Estate listings. Now, Slashdot realized that there is something called real estate... Yahoo!?
yeah, but it's a good way to narrow down your choices...when I was house-hunting, I used the 'net a fair bit, and my realtor and I went through listings in her computer system to narrow things down...w/o a computer, I think you'd be totally lost, just wasting time looking through listings on paper or visiting every for sale house in the area you're looking in
terradot, growing awareness
A) unless you have really good credit, or are capable of a hefty down payment, you're fairly limited.
B) A lot of the homes don't have pictures, which is really annoying, and
C) You're removed from the possibility of getting a HUD or FHA home.
I'm currently looking for a house as well. I don't know what you're markets like, but I'm being told by several people to be patient and try for a HUD home so that I can get a really good deal. There are so many homes being traded right now that it seems ideal for purchasing one. Not to mention the low interest rate, and the VERY expensive rent on apartments.
All in all, I think that the Online part of home buying will become more prominent, but it will take some modifications in the home buying process to help steamline the "parouse to Purchase" process. All of the realtors use the computer to look up homes, we just need to find a way to grab their benefits without their cost.
....try clickahomecanada.com -- it's new, so it doesn't have a ton of listings, but it seems to have potential...
What does it mean to wake out of a dream
and be wearing someone else's shorts?
BNL, Born on a Pirate Ship (1998)
Another good thing to do is to get on AIM (or whatever you chat with) and search for people from that area. Then you can find out what parts of town are nice to live in (i.e. low violence, stuff to do, proximity to DSL switches, etc).
The only way you could get a complete view of a city through an agent would be if that agent had a complete monopoly.
Another good thing to do is to get on AIM (or whatever you chat with) and search for people from that area. Then you can find out what parts of town are nice to live in (i.e. low violence, stuff to do, proximity to the good ISPs, etc).
The only way you could get a complete view of a city through an agent would be if that agent had a complete monopoly.
For a really good example of an up-to-date, well maintained, and fast local online MLS service, visit http://www.cincymls.com/ . The fact that this server is running Linux is a bonus. . . And no, I am not a realtor, nor am I affiliated in any way with cincymls.com.
This site is a good example of how to design, build, and implement a useful MLS server. National servers (i.e. realtor.com) could learn a few things from some of the good local MLS servers. Hell, if realtor.com was even up half as much as some of the local MLS servers, it would be an improvement.
Brandon
It's there thinking that home prices being what they are on the two coast should be the same with the heart land.
I just read that somewhere in Montana, that had a great fishing stream. The price per acre was over 3,000. Could you imagine what Joe/Jane farmer must think about the value of there land. they think if Montana could get that, they should to.
Hell, I was offered 1000 acre for 987,000 in the catskills of NY overlooking the hudson river. Ended up in a bidding war. Winning bid was over 2,100,000. Do you know that the owners of that property held it from the Cival war days. I felt sad for that family, they gave up for money what will never be avalible again, a place to call home.
I will not disclose where i live exactly but I live on a property 50' x 102', taxes just went up to 12 grand. I've got a yard in front and back. 2nd uglyest house on the block. parking in front when I want to, drive way and garage. communt to NYC 36 minutes on bus. bus station 2 blocks away.
Currently I was offered by contractors $ 482,000. ( that's the land value only ). They all stop by to make offers every month. Do I think it's worth that, no not realy but it's the location. Property with nice and easy commutes are getting real hard to find. Supply is getting tight.
Wait for a good economic downturn. prices will drop.
ONEPOINT
if you see me, smile and say hello.
The "net" has helped me alot with research. I use a very simple but profitable system for buying 2 and 3 families. My rules ( i hope it helps you guys ) are as follows.
1) find the work population center that people must travel to. I live in northern NJ so I use New York City.
2) using bus and rail scheduals I locate towns that have no more than 43 minutes of travel time to the main hubs on NYC ( Hoboken, Port Athority building and Grand Central station ). My list had over 321 zip codes
3) sort the list by average prices of 2 and 3 family homes take the bottom half of the list. (cheap homes)
3) take all the towns and sort by crime trend of 8 years. The sort should be from best to worst.
4) take the top 60. and now rank by average tax of homes. ( Most MLS have databases of these numbers.) take the 40 lowest tax areas.
5) rank the list by eduacation. the only data I have for this is the SAT scores that are published every year for each town. the data is for free.
6) take the top 10.
That's it, I then start seaching for handy man specials. and check out the towns. If I like the area, & the commute is true to bus schedual I start to hunt.
if you see me, smile and say hello.
Here in Austin, Texas, Real Estate Alliance was the first company to put the entire MLS system for the Austin area on-line. You state preferences, search, and get your results. Signing up for the service means that a realtor will call you shortly to follow up, but they're not pushy - you can tell them that you're 'just looking' and they're cool with that.
;-)
At the time they first set it up, in fact, the Board of Realtors got all pissed off. Now the Board does it too, but their service is worse.
If you're buying or selling in Austin, check them out. Good stuff, easy to use, good people.
Real Estate Alliance
- Wogbo The Frog God "All Hail Wogbo!"
My wife and I just had our offer accepted on a home. We did go through a real estate agent (Century 21). The agent sent us information that he found, via email and phone calls. However we felt that it was in our best interest to search as well, and not to rely on the agent alone. We used Realtor.com and we came up with many houses that we wanted to see, sent the agent the MLS# and he scheduled the rest. In fact, the house we are buying now we found on Realtor.com and when I was about to send the email to the agent asking him to schedule us to look at the place, he sent us information on that very house. In my opinion it is a very good tool for finding up to date listings. Don Kichline
Mid-Eastern Pennsylvania Gaming Convention
My parents do lease options in Cincinnati, OH. They use www.cincymls.com and they get a software package that has county by county information on what houses are available, prices other realty sells for in the county, and things of that nature. That seems to work pretty well for them. They do occasionally have to consult a realtor, but they usually don't like dealing with them.
I found my pleasant and humble abode using realtor.com. In fact, it was a 100% match for what my wife and I wanted. A nice ranch (very easy for wiring fiber and/or cat6e from floor to floor and room to room due to easy access) in the great quiet Suburbs with a nice plot of land, older construction with a fireplace, separate garages, etc. ad nauseum. I have since suggested realtor.com to others and there have been several success stories amongst those individuals (those with whom I still converse). Will we ever get rid of realtors, I doubt it. They know the legal end of the deals, and for most of us who do not have time to learn the specfic legalities of home ownership purchasing/tranferring, they're abilities are needed. Thankfully my brother has a side job as a realtor, so after finding the house, he took care of the rest.
/* eparkin - Software Architect, Perl/Python Coder, Ex-SCCA Rallycar Driver, FreeBSD & Mac OS X User */
Lately (in the past 6 months) I've notice an 'explosion' of ComFree houses being advertised via lawn signs. ComFree seems to offer a pretty slick service, including VR tours. The housing market in Winnipeg has taken off in the last year or so, and as a result the need for a high pressure real estate agent has dropped. It will be interesting to see how well ComFree does when the housing market cools off.
I'm in my right mind and I have the answer to everything!
I completely understand the geeky desire to do everything yourself (especially if it saves you some cash), but think about it for a second. Realtors spend their whole day looking at properties. A good realtor will know almost every single property that is for sale in their area. They will constantly be constantly on the look out for when new 'gems' come out on the market so they can show them to their clients. I will readily admit that there are many bad realtors out there, but considering that a piece of property is about as large of an investment as any of us are going to make, I would spend more time trying to find yourself a GOOD realtor than a good website. A realtor will be helpful in more than just finding the right house, they can help you examine the house you are interested in. They can spot flaws, or potential problems that are easy to overlook as a new home buyer. I realize this may not be the answer you are looking for, but its best one IMHO. As0k "Why spending time finding clever quotes by famous people, when you can make up your own and attribute them to famous people?" --My last Boss
Location! Location! Location!
You want to be in a good neighbourhood, close to schools, shopping, and recreational facilities.
I don't know how you are going to determine if a given property has any of these things purly by surfing. Sooner or later, prospective purchasers are going to have to go to the area and find out for themselves what it is like.
The pictures and short description of the house will not give you enough information about whether you want to buy it or not.
Besides, when you are spending that much coin, you want to see it for yourself.
People won't buy cars on-line, why would they buy houses that way. Part of the purchasing experience
is going to the place and checking it out - live and in person.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
I'm in Florida, and acutally close on a house next month. I discovered that the net was a great tool for finding what neighborhood's we could afford. Other than that, most listings are out of date with what is still available. I found going to a realtor much more helpful. Their tools are better and they'll be able to give us specific addresses and more information.
I think part of the problem of buying/listing houses online and something else, like say a computer or a car, is that buying a house requires the use of quite a few middlemen. The bank, the realty agent, appraisers/inspectors, and so on. Getting a comprehensive listing bringing together all these parties would be something of a chore, and they'res not really any incentive for any of these parties independently to bring such a site together.
Ideally, I'd like to see something like www.carsoup.com adapted for home buying - but thats just me...
My 2 cents!
I just recently bought a place in the Cleveland area. After spending about 3 months of my time searching Realtor.com/local realtor site/ and a few others, I found that nothing beats a local realtor that has experience in that area. My suggestion is to find a realtor that you know or that a friend can refer you too and you can trust.
Working with a realtor, you'll find that there are so many more listings then what is presented on the web. Also, we all know the (location, location, location) importance, but another very important aspect of buying a home is TIMING. The best locations can sell quick, and working with a realtor can give you access to the newest listings before anyone decides to put them out on the web. Or, if you wait around too long it gives another party a chance to put a bid in, and you end up in a bidding war.
One last point if you're a first time home buyer, working with a realtor can help you with the negotiating process and working with the bank. But like I said before, make sure you work with someone you know or trust.
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Does anyone remember
The only reason real-estate doesn't work on the web is because realtors mae sure it doesn't work on the web. If you could find a house on the Internet you wouldn't need to pay their monopoly-based 6% commission. First they don't make the MLS available for browsing until it is weeks old, and useless. Then they hold an open house for realtors only. Finally, they try to steer you away from any deal that desn't generate their commissions. It's a racket. Homes would be a lot easier to buy and sell if realtors were paid by the hour.
"another Slashdot reader who lives close to you may be asking this same question" I seriously dobt it...
"another Slashdot reader who lives close to you may be asking this same question" I seriously doubt it...
I think the Seller's agent is ripe for revolution. Does the Seller's agent do anything for you other than suggest a selling price, and get you listed in your local MLS? For that they charge you 3% of the sale price??? I would think that a company who does nothing more than list you in MLS could charge a flat $500 fee and make a killing. I've thought seriously about starting an internet company to do exactly this....please, beat me to the punch.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
So, if you're moving to the Washignton DC suburbs, you're pretty much screwed. Listings last about an hour around here.
Reboot macht Frei.
Here in the greater boston area, it's quite common for houses to sell in less than a week and for apartments to rent in less than 24 hours. I current;y live in an apartment the we rented the first day it was listed. My roommate is moving to an apartment that was available for less the 24 hours.
By searching on-line, especially at Boston.com, you can see listings the day they go live, often prior to finding them in the paper. As you need to act fast if you want a good apartment here, searching on-line is a must.
Because the majority of apartments in town are rented through an agency, you still need to contact a realtor, however, it's much easier to approach a realtor with a list of places you want to see, that they had listed, than it is to sit down in thier office, to go through the listings.
As for buying on-line, the majority of people I know who have bought property in Metro Boston in the past two years have found their new home some how utilizing the Net.
As I stated above, people around here are still going to the realtor to see the place, prior to making an offer. (Though a $400k triple-decker house around the corner from me sold last summer, sight unseen in less than a week.)
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The key is to find a web site that has an MLS for your area online, and provides addresses, _not_ necessarily maps. You can get a map anywhere if you have the address, but some MLS sites don't give you the address, just maps.
If you're looking for FSBO, I haven't seen much in that respect that is reliable. However, an MLS is typically where realtors go to find their info. Almost any large market has two or three MLS sites.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
My wife & I just bought our first house. Our agent had told us there was nothing new on the market that day, and that didn't sound right to me. So I went onto www.realtor.com and put in the area and criteria for the house we wanted, and emailed our realtor the listing. One of the houses on that listing was the first house we bid on, and that's the one we got. I think these sites are good supplemental tools to buying/selling property.
Realtors serve a purpose (or at least they used, to). Buying/selling a home is expensive, complicated and seldom done (most people will only do it a few times at most in their entire lives). It was cost effective to pay someone to lead you through the paperwork landmines and insure that you didn't land in the worst house in town. 6% was a fair shake for what you got.
Problem is that the realtors got used to their position as the gatekeepers. They came to believe that they deserved $12,000 for showing someone a house, and they worked on ways to both keep other people from entering the business as realtors and to keep people from finding out about what is available on their own.
The same thing has happened with entertainment. A few distributor got big enough to force everyone else out, and then became comfortable as the gatekeepers. Problem is, the Net doesn't just tear down the gate, it burns the whole fence.
It used to be that the only effective way to advertise a house was through a multiple listing service. Which amount to collusion among brokers to keep everyone else out of the brokerage market.
Fortunately, the rise of the Net and other means have allowed people to bypass realtors. For-Sale-By-Owner, which basically is just a advertising service like the auto mags at the gas station has grown tremendously as people have started looking at the ridiculous rates charged by brokers. And brokers are responding. Many have much lower rates, and I've heard scare-mongering commercials on the radio ("Jim is enjoying his new home, while John is readjusting his asking price for the third time. Jim is smart. He listed with us (doesn't mention that Jim payed $12,000)"). The most productive thing I've seen from realtors is the change toward being 'buyer's agents'. This is basically paying someone to find a house for you. This is still attractive because it's hard to know what the good side of town is when your moving >300miles and you've seen the town once.
Right now, the Net doesn't provide a lot, but the Net has only been popular a few years. Brokers have been around for 100s, and they have a lot of consumer confidence. As the Net matures, people will find it valuable as the information resource it is and recognize that they don't have to spend the $12000. But it will take time.
I'm surprised I cannot find any open source apps for putting a real estate site online. Wouldn't each broker out there require one?
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
This site www.robinhus.dk allows buyers and sellers to establish contact without the realtor middle-man. This means both parties save money on the deal.
All MLS listings on Realtor.Com are two weeks old before being posted on the web.
is this one
i just spent the past three months helping my mother find her new home...two and a half months were spent using web realtors and such...and i'll be honest with you, the real estate sellers on the web have NOTHING in the way of true online resources. Realty websites do nothing except serve as an advertisement for the realtors who will ultimately get your business anyway.
Oh, and after two months on the 'net, we were able to locate and close on a house in less than three weeks with a local real estate agent. Guess some things just weren't meant for e-business.
This site is for "For Sale By Owners" only, and it's written in Python!!
FSBO is probably the best way to go for selling and buying a house. Realitors take about 3% when buying and charge up to 8% for selling. This adds up!!! A realitor wanted $14K for my $200K house. Screw that. What do realitors do anyway? Show you the house, take you to a title company and give you a bottle of wine when the sale is final. They are totally middle. This time I'm selling by owner and saving $$$$.
Remember children - there are no stupid questions, just stupid people.
I loved shopping for houses online. We still got an agent in the end. But the net allowed us to spend several months looking a different houses, and searching by different critera.
Hi folks, I'm working on a site now that will be listing real estate properties for sale or rent. It has some search in there already... however, this search is done on internal listings only. Please go check out the site, www.c4home.com It's only partially complete... the actual services will be offered to clients in a month's time or so. There still needs to be a convenient online payment mechanism worked out. Cheers, site owner.
The portal approach to aggregating real estate listings is doomed. It doesn't work the way the web works.
There is a technical description with a nice animation showing how we think it will evolve.
Organized real estate in the US is something over a half million people scrambling to protect a franchise they see threatened from all sides. Three years ago we thought we'd provide a solution with dynamic web sites running off a database of listings, but most real estate business are too small and too technophobic to host their own site. The regional boards have a decision making process that can be counted on to make the worst possible technical choices. The big success in real estate portals is HomeStore, but look at a Weekly Standard article for a view on that.
Eventually we matched our solution to the way the real estate business works; highly distributed, yet providing for aggregation; local origination and control, but integration with national players (e.g., for mortgage and other financial services); document oriented, with access provided using search engine technology. Essentially, we mapped the WWW onto real estate and embedded its business rules in XML.
We are driving this vision forward by pushing for industry acceptance of open XML schema standards and by letting the world know that portals are not the only way.
This site rocked, but didn't have many listed, maybe in the future it will. Seems to be globally targetted too. I did not find my recent home on it, but it sure helped.
Homes Marketing