The House Hunt - Search via Internet

Internet Pre-Search
In these days of internet bringing photos and listings of houses for sal to our finger tips, you can do a lot of looking ahead of time before you ever actually go on the physical house hunt.

From the internet you can look at the houses inside and out, the neighborhood (Google earth), the tax records, services and businesses surrounding, the schools, the terrain, the roads, and local government.

Some popular sites for online house hunting are:
Zillow
Trulia
Realtor
Redfin

It does help if you know the general area where you want to search, but with any of those websites you can set up search filters for houses with certain attributes, price range and location. Those automatic searches will allow you to keep track of ones you have already looked at and notify you of new postings.

Some real estate agencies host their own front end searches to MLS listings in their region. These may offer additional features for you to rate the houses you have seen, or to automatically get updates if there are any changes to the listings.

Be aware! If you click the button that says "I want more information about this property" you will get several calls almost immediately from real estate agents. Some will be helpful, some will be pushy. If they find out you are just looking and not in the position to buy just yet, they may not be as helpful. I would suggest doing as much research as you can before you request more information from an agency. You will find the same home listed on different sites and they may have different photos or different information about the home.

Getting information on the houses you like
So much is available on the internet now, that you can get a lot of background information on the homes you like. For example:

• Tax Records - check the county where located. Tax records will show the sales history of the property and ownership, a timeline of property tax assessments, permits for remodeling, possibly even photos if construction is relatively new
• Geospatial maps - part of county website or perhaps state website. These can show the parcel ID, neighborhood and surrounding area including recent home sales, drainage and zoning features, voter districts, school districts, and a host of other types of information.
• Google Earth will allow you to zoom into the area and look at the street level views of the neighborhood as well as getting a birds eye view of the area from above. This is a very valuable tool for identifying traffic and roads in the area, proximity to industry or commercial property, greenbelts or water nearby.