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.
Slashdot Mirror
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.