Good real estate websites, part 1

What's the best website to use when trying to find a house? I'm asked that quite a bit, and my answer's simple: realtor.com.

What makes realtor.com so great is that it's an all-in-one site, meaning that it has all houses for sale by all agents in a given market -- and every house has at least one photo. Right now there's nobody else doing this (though many companies are trying to join the game).

Real estate agents don't have to pay to post their listings to realtor.com -- it's completely free. That means you can go to realtor.com and search an entire town and see literally everything for sale through agents there. When you do, you'll find that some houses have special headlines and multiple photos; these are listed by agents who've paid realtor.com advertising fees to dress up things a bit.

Other good real estate sites:

homes.com -- Like realtor.com, they list everything on the market. The catch: Apparently, only agents who've paid to advertise with homes.com get photos on their listings. (All other listings have boxes with the words "photo not available."

Yahoo real estate -- Uses the same data as homes.com.

zillow.com -- Started allowing agents to post their listings, but only a few have done so at this point.

macomb.com/realestate -- This is actually a directory of real estate offices based in Macomb, Illinois, and operated by Infobahn Outfitters, a local Internet service company. Infobahn created and services our own office's website, so I'm a little biased, but what I like is how Infobahn doesn't discriminate. They list nearly every real estate office in the area -- as long as that office has an email address. This page also ranks highly in any Google search of "real estate Macomb IL." Many clients have told me how much they appreciate this page, especially if they're from outside the area and want a quick overview of the offices that serve the Macomb market.

historicproperties.com -- A specialty site for really old houses. I've been surprised to learn recently that there are many buyers out there looking for highly specific types of structures (e.g., 1890 Victorians), and that they're willing to move a considerable distance -- sometimes hundreds of miles -- to buy and live in them. The folks who run this site really seem to know what they're doing.

Chapter 1

Is is really possible to write a blog about real estate in a small town in west-central Illinois? I'm about to find out, I guess.

What will be posted here? Real estate stuff, of course, but in a way that's specific to our market. You can find marketwide, macro-themed real estate stories (no doubt about how the real estate market has hit the skids) in The Wall Street Journal or some other national publication.

But for info about some other important things -- like the housing shortage in our area, Macomb's multi-family zoning imbroglio, or $5,000/acre patches of black dirt -- this is the place.

This site's designed to be interactive, so please feel free to leave me feedback.

Cheers,
Nick

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