Home Improvement Articles by Experts

• Determine your price range: There are millions of homes listed on the Web. Instead of wasting time wading through listings for homes you can’t afford, go to www.bankrate.com or www.mortgagecalc.com for calculators that help you figure out what you can afford.
  
  
• Sort through listings: Until a few years ago, only real estate agents had access to lists of homes from the giant information-sharing Multiple Listing Service (MLS). Now you can access many of those listings yourself, although some details, such as the original listing price and commission rates, may be available only to real estate agents.

Start with www.realtor.com, which has three million listings, along with prices—far more than any other site. This site also enables you to screen for homes by style, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, waterfront or mountain views and dozens of other factors. For many areas, the site also includes comments about local market conditions from real estate professionals. A 360-degree virtual tour of some homes lets you use your mouse to navigate through several rooms as if you were there.

Next, move on to the local real estate agent Web sites. You often can find these through Realtor.com, which provides E-mail addresses and links to Web sites for listing agents of particular homes. Local sites often have more accurate and up-to-date information about homes than national sites.

• Compare prices: Get tax records, sales histories and prices of “comparables”—homes in the area that are similar to the one you’re interested in—at www.zillow.com. The site has more than 60 million estimated home valuations across the US. It offers maps showing prices in neighborhoods, plus loads of historical charts and graphs displaying how a particular home’s value has risen or fallen in the past 30 days or since its last sale.

Another site, www.homegain.com, combines several services—letting you estimate home values, get prequalified for a mortgage, view listings, compare real estate agents and commission rates, and even find a moving company.
Caution: Estimated home values vary on different sites and are not based on appraisals. Property details can be inaccurate, and offering prices can be out-of-date. Double-check details with agents and home owners. Also, visit the house and talk to neighbors.

• Compare features: Using satellite imagery, www.trulia.com has teamed up with Google Earth to let you “fly” down to treetop level to look at available properties in near 3-D. Yahoo’s real estate site—realestate.yahoo.com—and www.bestplaces.net let you research a neighborhood for schools, recreational facilities, crime statistics…even how many Starbucks coffee shops there are.

If you are willing to pay a fee to get more detailed information than is available on free sites, consider www.neighborhoodscout.com, which provides nearly 200 types of statistics and characteristics, such as school district ratings and crime rates, as well as how much median home values have changed. Subscription plans range from seven days ($19.95) to one year ($99.95).

• Consider a newly built home: Amid the plunge in new-home sales, builders are slashing prices by as much as 20% and offering other incentives. Homes available from three of the biggest US home builders are listed at www.beazerhomes.com…www.kbhome.com…and www.tollbrothers.com.

Aggregator sites: Newly built homes around the US are listed at www.americanhomeguides.com…www.inest.com…and www.newhomeguide.com. Homes are listed by type, location, size, price and other factors. Inest.com offers rebates of 1% of the purchase price for homes bought based on their listings.

• Compare mortgage rates from more than 70 mortgage lenders at www.e-loan.com. You also can call an associate on a toll-free number (888-533-5333) for help. At www.priceline.com, name the mortgage terms you want, then see whether such a loan is available. At www.hsh.com, compare mortgage rates and find names of lenders by state. Also try www.mortgage.com…www.quickenmortgage.com…and www.bankrate.com for similar information.
  
  
• Get preapproved for a loan: Buyers with strong credit can get loan preapproval from an on-line lender, print out the preapproval notice and carry it with them while looking at houses.

Selling a Home

• List your home: If you’re willing to list and show your home yourself, you can save thousands of dollars in real estate agent commissions with the Internet.

At www.owners.com, you can choose from several listing packages. The basic one for $49.95 allows you to write a description of unlimited length and run it on the site with five photos for as long as it takes to sell your home. The deluxe package for $79.95 includes unlimited photos, a customized yard sign and a personalized answering service. For $377, Owners.com will list your home on your local MLS for six months. If a broker brings you a home buyer in response to your listings, you can negotiate a commission rate—which usually is up to 3%—but you won’t have to pay a seller’s agent, saving you up to 3%. (In typical non-Internet real estate agent agreements, commission rates often are negotiated down. The combined rate these days is typically 5% or less.) If a home buyer responds to your Web listing directly, there is no commission.

• Set your dream price:  Even if you don’t necessarily expect to sell your home, on www.zillow.com you can post a “Make Me Move” price that is so high it might convince you to change your mind if someone offers that price.

Caution: Even though the Internet can be a powerful selling tool, a real estate agent may bring more potential buyers to your house…help you avoid mistakes, such as overpricing your home…stage a successful open house…help you negotiate a better price…and even help coordinate your work with a real estate attorney.

 

Bottom Line/Personal interviewed Blanche Evans, editor of Realty Times, the Internet’s most visited independent real estate news service, Dallas. She is author of Bubbles, Booms, and Busts: Make Money in Any Real Estate Market (McGraw-Hill). Last year, she was named one of the “25 Most Influential People in Real Estate” by Realtor Magazine. www.realtytimes.com.
(Article originally published June 1, 2007)