Every piece of tech deserves a good home. It used to be that your realtor would ask you what you’re looking for and then present you with a list of houses to check out. While it may still happen that way, there’s plenty you can do with little effort on your own to improve your chances of finding that perfect place. There are many online and mobile app resources available nowadays that make it easier than ever to go house hunting. We review several great ways to leverage the power of the web to help you find the home of your dreams.
It all starts with the search. Most real estate sites allow you to perform basic searches by location, price, number of bedrooms and bathrooms. You can narrow your search with advanced options such as square footage, age, parking, etc. You’re then presented with a map or list of results which you can browse through for descriptions, photos, and a bounty of helpful information such as how much property taxes cost and whether there are any homeowners association fees.
A very nice feature these sites all provide is the ability to view which properties have upcoming open houses or are new to the market within a few days. This lets you pop in and immediately see what’s new without having to filter through listings you’ve already seen before. You can also see recent sales prices to get a sense of what houses are going for on the market.
A few great websites that we use are Zillow, Trulia, and Redfin. The differences are subtle and it may come down to unique features and preferred user interfaces. Zillows’s unique Make Me Move feature allows potential sellers to set a “dream” price for their home without actually putting it on the market. Their Zestimate also provides a computerized guess at what each property is worth based on what’s around it. Trulia has a nice option that shows you listings that have been recently reduced, perhaps giving you that extra bit of leverage. Most of these sites provide iPhone and Android apps as well, allowing you to drive around and look up listings while on the move.
After looking at beautiful photos of the home of your dreams, it helps to know more about the neighborhood you’ll be living in. Property descriptions will happily explain the benefits of a house, but sellers agents wouldn’t be very good at their job if they told you about all the negatives. Using tools such as Google Street View or Bing Maps’ bird’s eye view mode you can take a peek from your computer. You can find out if a multi-million dollar house sits across the street from an ugly apartment building or the great restaurant next door also keeps a dumpster next to your driveway. Your local newspaper’s website may have hyperlocal neighborhood information as well, such as The Washington Post’s Neighborhoods tool for the DC/MD/VA area.
All of these are great tools to help you become a more educated home buyer. Finally there's no excuse to delay buying all those fun tech toys to put together your dream home theater system or home office.
(Images: Flickr member Alex Liivet licensed for use under Creative Commons)
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My husband and I just bought our first house in Seattle, and we relied heavily on the Redfin site and iPhone app during our hunt. However, a couple notes:
1) We found that, while Redfin's tech resources and touring crew were very helpful, the actual negotiation agent was not as determined to put in the best offer for us. Once we'd done our hunt techie style, we talked to a more traditional real estate agent who was much more willing and able to argue the sellers down to a reasonable range, given the market, area and some problems with the house. So if you live in a city that has Redfin representation, consider feeling out the process of making an offer with both types of agent before you commit. We saved a good 5% of the house price by not going with Redfin in the end.
2) Zillow's estimates are helpful, but they're still not all that accurate after the crash. Don't be scared away or wooed by prices that seem too high or too low on Zillow -- individual properties aren't always represented well by averages. If you love a house but are just making assumptions about its value or what the sellers will take, dig a little deeper outside of the tech world. (For example, Zillow believed our house to be worth a good 10% more than we paid, and our offer was pretty consistent with actual appraised value.)
Good luck, home shoppers!
Congratulations to you and your husband on your first home! My sister lives in Seattle and while she complains of the rain, it's always been sunny and beautiful whenever I've visited. :)
I've also heard of Redfin agents having a reputation of not really caring for the buyer they are representing. Many of these bulk online realtor websites seem to have the same issue. I had the same issue with a ZipRealty realtor several years ago. It seems to be a general problem with realtors. I've gotta try to dig up this article I read a little while back that talked about how there isn't much incentive for a realtor to push for a better price for the seller/buyer. The amount of time they would spend on a relatively small return (for them) isn't really worth their time. Nowadays I use a trust family associate who really goes to battle for my best interests!
Definitely Zillow's estimates are still just computerized estimates and can't be taken for fact, but it can still be helpful.
A word of caution about Zillow - it's records aren't particularly accurate. It has my house's 'sold for' price listed as 1.5x what I actually paid.
Interesting about Zillow there's this one house nearby that they show for sale that has already sold, and it won't clear away and keeps tempting me.