Real Estate Sites

We are still searching. Every morning we spend an hour or two checking the web for that perfect house that meets our criteria. 

We kind of have this morning routine now. Get breakfast and coffee and head to the home office. 

We look over all of the latest listing and review any old ones that may have had some new information that may have had a change to their status. 

The first site we look at is Zillow. They seem to be the most up to date and are not restricted to just what is on the MLS. Then we check zipRealty, Trulia, and Hot Pads. We have a subscription of Home Path, but they advertise through Zillow and it’s easier to just get the information from there. Although Home Path does send regular alerts when there is a new house on the market. The other websites out there usually have what Zillow has, but occasionally one or the other might get a house a day or so sooner than Zillow. 

We looked at Home Exchange and HomeAway. Both are Great sites, but mostly for finding vacation homes and not so much for buying and selling. 

Thanks to the online world, we can now also check the local newspapers online for listings. So every morning, we are also checking those. 

 We tried the free 7-Day trials to Foreclosure.com and RealtyTrac . However, we have had some pretty horrible luck with both of them. It seems (or at least in the area we are looking) that the houses listed on Zillow for sale by these sites are just advertisements. Once you get an account with either one of them, the house you are looking for is not their listing or was sold years ago. Needless to say, we canceled both of the subscriptions well before the seven days was up. 

A friend of our recommended this book, but we haven’t had a chance to read it. We will have to put it in our future reading list, however, in the mean time our time and energy is being focused on the search. If anyone has had a chance to read it, let us know. 

Every time we find what looks like it could be a contender on paper, we go over every photos with as much magnification as we can to see if there is anything we can see. If it looks good to us, we send a note off to our realtor go does a virtual walk-though for us with us on the phone.  While on the phone with us, he is taking photos of all the good, bad, and ugliness. He hasn’t had to go out but once since we have such strict criteria. And we don’t call him unless there is a match.

In the mean time, still looking.