When I tell people (especially women) that I am a Realtor, about 30% of them get a gleam in their eyes and say, “I love looking at houses.” They confess to watching the listings online and going to Open Houses with no intention of buying. Yesterday a friend told me she and her husband go to mobile home showrooms just to browse! WOW! If you are one of those people, I might not tell you anything you don’t already know about real estate websites, but maybe we can at least normalize your obsession. Believe me, you are not alone. If you are a relative newbie in the Real Estate Stalking community, let me tell you about some popular sites:
Let’s start with the granddaddy of them all, www.realtor.com. You can search by zip code and housing features, and sort by new listings. The website pulls data directly from the MLS, so it has status updates in real time, i.e. when a house goes under contract, the Status changes to Contingent as soon as the Realtor puts it into the MLS. Realtor.com also has a sister website, www.houselogic.com, aimed more towards homeowners with lots of DIY stuff, tax tips, and suggestions for green living. Look for houselogic to be combined with realtor.com in the next few months. Disclaimer: this website is promoting home ownership on behalf of Realtors, so if you are looking for balanced advice on whether you should buy or rent, you won’t find it here.
Another listings website, which popularized the Realtor-hated Zestimate, is Zillow. A few notes about Zillow:
The accuracy of Zestimates vary widely, and even the highly rated data is suspect. The Orange and Durham county data is similar to the data described in this youtube video; even though it was rated 4 stars, the appraiser explains why this still isn’t a good estimate. (Note: If you are thinking of selling your home, go onto Zillow, search for your address, and Correct Home Facts if the number of bedrooms/baths/square footage is under-reported. This will improve your Zestimate.)
A limitation of Zillow is that data is not updated regularly in the same way realtor.com is. For example, this home, which went under contract on 11/7/13 and closed on 12/6/13 for $484,500, is still listed as For Sale.
Zillow sells advertising space to Realtors. When you pull up a property, you will see 3-4 agents with contact info on the right side of the screen. It will say Listing Agent or Premier Agent. Be aware that if you call the Listing Agent about the property, (s)he is representing the Seller’s interests, so don’t share any confidential or financial information about yourself. If you call a Premier Agent, you are just responding to their paid advertisement. This is neither good nor bad; just be aware that the data isn’t generated solely on endorsements.
Every real estate firm has their own website that pulls listings from the MLS, and each is a little different. Of course, I am partial to My FM Realty. You have an immediate search engine at your fingertips, and when you register with a little bit of personal information, you can save searches and receive email alerts and/or texts when anything changes (new listings, price drops, etc) in your search. You can register with me as your agent, and when you identify yourself as a real estate stalker, I promise to leave you alone. 🙂 Or let me know what kind of house you are looking for, and I’ll be on the hunt, too. I also love the mobile version of this site, and no special app is needed. If you are out looking at houses, and you want to pull up a listing, just go to www.myfmrealty.com. If you allow the website to know where you are, it will generate all listings within 0.25 miles – a very easy way to find out details of the house you are sitting in front of without getting anyone on the phone, key for stalkers of any sort.
For the person who loves ALL things home-related, check out Hooked on Houses. It is like the People magazine of home websites. You get Celeb Houses, TV/Movie Houses, hilarious Bad MLS photos, and the crack cocaine of home improvement obsessionistas, a Before and After gallery. For a quick orientation to the site, check out the Top 20.
In the “Your Tax Dollars at Work” category of websites, let me introduce you to GIS. Every county has a GIS website that connects a smart map to information on each plot of land. You can look up the owners, when they purchased the home, how much they paid for it (i.e. “stamp value”), and what the tax value is. This level of information is helpful when you find a home you want to purchase, or if you are just more curious or have more time on your hands than the average Joe. You can also use this website if you forget the names of your neighbors you just met at the community pool.
Good luck stalking! Let me know if I can help!
thriftymomrealtor 