Preparing to buy my first home
 

Does anyone know where some good online realty sites are? I'm talking about the ones that have just as much information that realtors have access to. The Seattle P-I had a big article about it a few weeks ago and listed about 10 good sites, but I'm having trouble finding it. Do they all require paying to have the full access to these sites or are there free ones with full public access?

You can use realtor.com, which is free. That has lots of info.

There's also www.mls.com, but realtor.com has a better search tool.

Good luck!

In addition to what Lurkette said....

www.Zillow.com is a recomended site and your local property appraiser may have a website also. Property records are all available at your county courthouse.

Most Chamber of Commerce websites have links for realtors. If nothing else, they will give you an idea of what is on the market in your price range.

I think you'll find most online realty sites aren't updated very often. When we were looking at houses a couple of years ago, we found several online that had been sold 6-12 before. We even found a listing for a condo in our building from the original builder.

I have a spectacular idea. Plot a graph of median home price over the last 50 years or so in your area. Then find the average return. Next compare the average return over the last 50 years to the average return of the last ten years.

Finally, put your money in a CD or Moneymarket that has almost no risk and laugh while you earn 6% until this market takes a dump. After it does, buy yourself two "first" houses and rent one out. Create some wealth and assets instead of following those with too much slick financing down the tubes.

I used realtor.com tp find my last house. The only properties my realtor came up with were ones I blew past that had no photos. It worked well for me.

I bought my house 3 years ago, and I STILL get people stopping by saying they saw my home on "realtor.com" and wanted to know If I was taking anymore offers....

Question for you - are you not planning on using a realtor? Sometimes just getting in touch with a realtor and letting them know what you are interested in you can have a search pulled.

If you don't want to use a realtor - www.realtor.com is a good nationwide site, but you won't see all the information a realtor does. There is also a secure login site called the Home Buyer Scouting report - but for this you usually have to contact a Countrywide Loan Officer and they will probably try to hook you up with a realtor. Or you can always go with a local company real estate office's website - like www.johnlscott.com - I have heard pretty good feedback for the site.

I am a realtor - and I won't try to push my services on ya ;)

Not to toot my own horn here, but perhaps you'll find this thread helpful...

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=67671