Locating Properties (part 3) - National Real Estate Sites

Let's jump right in and take a look at how national real estate sites can be a good source of property leads.

There’s no doubt that real estate brokerages control the vast majority of listings of property for sale. Agent listings on national sites can have certain kinds of issues - among them outdated listings that don't get removed, they are still an important place to look.

There are some pretty well-know places to search:

www.Realtor.com. I don’t tend to use realtor.com to search for listings because I get frustrated with the amount of outdated information I find. It seems to me that about 7 or 8 out of every 10 listings on realtor.com are no longer for sale, but were never taken offline. I do use realtor.com to help find agents, to browse properties in areas in which I am interested to get a sense of value, and learn the communities and so forth. It has some pretty good search tools, so for that it’s useful. And, my comments withstanding, realtor.com is still among the top places to find property for sale.

Here's an FYI (for your information) - be watchful when you are browsing the online classifieds of regional papers. Often when you think you are browsing their reader-placed ads you end up just looking at realtor.com listings. Often you have to dig deeper in the newspaper's website than just the "property for sale" link to find the actual reader-placed classifieds.

The real gem, as far as real estate agent listings go, is being able to access the various multiple listings services. In some cases like Houston’s www.HAR.com, or Ohio's Lake Eerie region's www.firelandsmls.com the service is available to the public without any complication. Some others like Tidewater Virginia's www.hrmls.com provide a certain amount for free, but require either an agent's connection or the paying of a modest subscription fee.

Many links to local MLS services go right through agents' websites, and these can be accessed just as easily as those you can access directly. Searching for the term "MLS" in the area of your interest will generally bring up links, whether they are direct, or on an agency website.

Another FYI - if an agent forces you through a contact page to get your criteria – in other words, you really can’t access the MLS through their site without giving them your contact data. I’d move on. Your objective at this juncture is to research and locate properties, not to be forced into a contact with an agent.

That said, when you find a good agent to work with, they can send you automatically emailed listings that meet your criteria. This is a really useful service and probably the best reason to invest time and energy locating an investor-friendly agent. Probably the best tool I have at my disposal is the nearly daily flood of leads automatically generated by various MLS services and sent through these agents auto-emailings.

Homes guides are great to pick up when you are in an area. I don’t know if you are like me (my wife just laughs at this), but whenever I travel to a new location one of the first things I do is pick up all the homes guides at the grocery store or street corner. Thankfully, most have online versions. Here are three to get you started:

www.Homes.com
www.Homesandland.com
www.harmonhomes.com

Next time I'll be discussing private investor sites and providing a great collection of links to investors who have great deals - often at wholesale pricing - for other investors.

Until Next Time, live your real estate dreams!
William Flood
The Coast to Coast Real Estate Investor