Master the Art of Online House Hunting
With the dozens of categories and qualifiers on the many real estate search sites out there to help you find the home of your dreams, it should be easy to put into a search engine just what you are looking for and find the perfect home, right? Wrong; and the experts of the Equifax Finance Blog explain why in the new blog post, “Secrets of Online House Hunting.”
It turns out that in addition to just knowing what you are looking for, where you look is a huge part of the equation. The mantra of location, location, location with real estate isn’t just limited to physical property, but where you look online, too. This is because most homes you find online have been published one place, and then syndicated or shared with many others. But the shared information may not be correct. Like a game of telephone, by the time the information reaches you, it may be vastly different from the information that was originally shared.
It is because of this distortion from repetition that you should be sure to include local brokerages in your online search and the places you explore. Similarly, if you follow properties that you find online back to their original listing brokerage, you may find out more accurate information about the property, from good news like a price reduction or other bonus to bad news like it being under contract or having sold months ago.
To learn more personal finance tips, from house hunting to identity theft solutions, check the Equifax Finance Blog.
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2 Comments
March 7th, 2013 at 4:35 pm
[...] With the dozens of categories and qualifiers on the many real estate search sites out there to help you find the home of your dreams, it should be easy to put into a search engine just what you are looking for and find the perfect home, right? Wrong; and the experts of the Equifax Finance [Read More] [...]
March 14th, 2013 at 9:54 am
Good article. One thing I’d add is try not to start looking above your price range; once you go there, it’s tempting to consider taking on more house than you can afford. Although the tightening of the capital markets operates as a built-in obstacle to becoming “house poor,” it never hurts to tread with a little caution.