1) Don't Use a National Home for Sale Listings Search SiteWhat every real estate agent knows, that most home buyers don't, is that the national sites of Home For Sale Listings carry a lot of misinformation. For one: some of the homes for sale on these sites aren't actually for sale. Some are fake home listings set up to scam unsuspecting home buyers and renters out of their money. These fake listings are often real homes, but owned by some unsuspecting home owner. But these homes are often not even listed for sale and they never were listed for sale by that home owner.Another common issue is these non-local home search sites typically carry home for sale listings of homes that are no longer even available. They've long since sold. Your favorite house, or houses, on these sites often has been sold weeks and even months before to another home buyer. In fact, a large percentage of these homes listed for Sale are no longer available. Why would a site list a Home for Sale that isn't available?National Home Listings Search Sites exist to capture your information for profit. Each individual page that you visit about a home for sale is an opportunity for them to cash in. Why take take down a high traffic site page, about an incredible property that home buyers really like, when it's making them so much money? Between having to protect yourself from scams, and wasting valuable time trying to see homes that are no longer for sale, these home for sale listings waste valuable home buyers' time. 2) Don't Search Homes for Sale By NeighborhoodAlways search home listings by map search - or at least by postal code. This is easy to use functionality is usually found just by opening up the "Advanced Tab" seen on the right.Who comes up neighborhood names anyways?Real estate agents!Philadelphia is a city of neighborhoods - that's why we love it. But neighborhoods don't have defined, official boundaries. What you think of as a neighborhood's borders is different than what I think are the borders for the same neighborhood. And neighborhoods have more than one name. So chances are your name for a Philadelphia neighborhood is probably different than the neighborhood the real estate agent entered it into the MLS.The MLS is the Multiple Listing Service where real estate agents enter their listings of homes for sale. Home Search Sites are directly fed the information that the agent entered about the home he is selling - correct or not. Take for example a home I sold on 8th street, near the Italian Market. To me this neighborhood is Bella Vista, but to someone else, it could be Queen Village. But remember its very close to the Italian Market, which is its very own neighborhood.Now some Realtor, at some point, accidentally created a whole new neighborhood in the MLS by misspelling the word: "Italian" (I know!). What make this worse is that a Realtor that lives north, like say in Fairmount, might list homes for sale in these neighborhoods as "South Philadelphia".... You get the point. If you run a search for homes for sale in Bella Vista, you will miss out on great homes for sale, that might be physically in that area; but have been listed very differently! 3) Use Polygon Search of Home Listings for SaleA map search is really your best way to find your next home and a Polygon Search is even better!What's a polygon map search?Some sites, like the one you're on now, allow you to easily create a multi-angled map of home for sale listings. For shape it must include 3 points; but it can be as multi-angled, and have as many points and corners as you like. This will allow you to avoid having your search bring in in pockets you would like to avoid. To the left is a search we created which allows someone to search within the exact parameters of the Meredith School Catchment - which has a few angles to it. Pretty slick! 4) Select to Be Notified of Price ChangesOnce you search for a home for sale, the better sites will allow you to save your search. Some sites will allow you to choose to be notified by email of when new homes come on the market.And some sites will even let you choose how often to be notified: by month, week or daily. Some home search sites also allow you to be notified when a house reduces its asking price. Be the first to know when homes change in the market place, so you can be the first to see them. This way you can be the home buyer that buys the home before the other buyers even know it's available. Home buying is often first come , first happily-ever-after! 5) Forget Realtors - they don't know either. I would like to say this article makes you a real estate listings pro; but after reading it you might know more than the average Realtor. Realtors aren't often taught how to find homes for sale. 6) If The Home Search Site Offers Help - Take It!We take great pride in the intuitiveness and functionality of our Home Search Site and there is always a Realtor on our site to help users. Our team of agents are trained to help users to set up their own custom home searches or to create custom home searches up for our site users.If the home search sites you are using offers you no cost help - put them to work for you!
