Google base, google earth, trulia, zillow, ebay, etc, etc, etc. Where do you search for homes? There are thousands upon thousands of places you can go online these days to search for homes. Oh yeah, I almost forgot…realtor.com! Which one is best? Where can you go to find everything all in one place? Are they all the same? I’m not going to be able to give a definitive examination of every option out there of course, but I want to touch base with you about this, because NAR (National Association of Realtors) predicts that over 95% of home buyers will be using the internet as an implemental tool in their home searches by the year 2010. 2010 is only a couple years away, everyone! And if you’re searching for a home now…you’re probably online already, or else you wouldn’t be reading this post! Where to go to search for homes is an important issue that every home buyer needs to answer for themselves, so I hope I can offer some helpful counsel. a href="http://www.realtor.com/www.realtor.com is the most popular, but I wouldn’t say that their #1 ranking is forever secure. They lead by a large margin, with well over a million visitors a month, but things change fast these days. One thing many home buyers do not often acknowledge in my experience is that a website can go up overnight, look very professional, take up a large amount of your time and offer you very little value. Home buyers are for the most part very savvy and discriminating about the information and services they use to guide their decisions. How do you know the website you’re using is up-to-date? How do you know it’s accurate? The point is that many sites host out-of-date listings, not maliciously or negligently, it’s just because the market changes so fast a lot of the time, and the system only updates periodically. So you can literally be looking yes" at hundreds of homes that are no longer even available. Price changes aren’t reflected, etc. So if you are just researching, all this isn’t so important, but if you’re looking for a home to buy, then that simply won’t do. Here’s the bottom line…if you are in the preliminary stages of your search, and you are just collecting information and previewing homes to get an idea of what your market looks like, any site will do. It’s a great way to get familiar with different areas and home values in your town. When you get to the point where you want to find a home and move in the next 3-4 months, that is the time to talk with a Realtor. A good Realtor will be able to connect you with every home fitting your criteria. They can send you information by email, point you in the direction of the best sites to visit and much more. This is still really the only way to ensure that you’re getting all the information you need.

 

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