House Hunting

Searching for a house from out of state is a bit of a challenge, but it's surprisingly easier than ever. There are many useful websites that enable the user to feel almost as if he/she is actually viewing the home. Although we are going to wait to actually purchase a home until we are living in Colorado, I have been doing some searching online. I just want to see what's out there. I want to know what sort of homes are available in our price range and I want to know how quickly they're selling.

The first website that I use when I am searching an area of Denver is realtor.com. This website allows me to search an area for a home in a particular price range. I can choose from many different criteria -bedrooms, bathrooms, and even surrounding areas. Another listing website that I sometimes use is homefinder.com. Although I tend to use realtor.com more often, this website tends to have more listings. Also, I can find listings for foreclosures on this site. Not that we're going to buy a foreclosure! Once I find some listings that I am interested in, both of these sites allow me to create a list that I can revisit whenever I go back to the websites. This is helpful because I don't have to write down any of the listings that I like, they are just saved for me. Realtor.com also sends me e-mail updates if anything changes with the listings on my list (the price decreases, the agent posts more pictures, etc.).

Since I am not in Colorado to check out neighborhoods for listings that I like, I have found that Googlemaps is the best tool to look at the homes that I like and the surrounding neighborhoods. Once I find a listing that I like on one of the websites, I search for the address using googlemaps.com. I zoom in on the street level view so that I can see what the house and neighborhood looks like. I usually go down the street and into surrounding streets using the street level view of googlemaps. This tool has been invaluable. There have been some listings that look great from the pictures on realtor.com, but when I looked at the house and neighborhood using googlemaps, I realized that the neighborhood is not what we're looking for.

The other great feature that realtor.com has is that it provides school information for each listing. Whenever I find a listing that I like, I always look at the school information that is given. Realtor.com provides the elementary, middle and high school for each listing. It also gives the school's rating from greatschools.net and from parents. This saves me an extra step. I don't have to search for the schools for each listing and I don't have to find the ratings for each school. Schools are a very important factor for us.

Although these websites cannot duplicate viewing homes in person, they are the next best thing. These allow someone from out of state, like me, to get a good sense of the real estate in different neighborhoods.