Tools of the Trade

One of the topics of discussion on Sunday was what tools we use to monitor our local market. I'm not talking statistics on overall market performance, but how to track local listings and sales, in order to identify specific properties and determine a reasonable offer price.

Below is a quick review of the the tools I know of and use. However additional input would really be appreciated. I will compile then post this on the sidebar for easy reference, like the glossary.

I don’t pay for any services, so all the sites are being reviewed in terms of their free content. If anyone pays for a service, please let us know what it is, and what value you think it provides (why its worth the $$).

Of course Lander, maintains links to many many good resources, so this is just a subset. They are grouped into categories.

Inventory Tracking
· http://www.metrolistmls.com/ Not as easy to navigate for just monitoring inventory, but gives the status of homes (like whether its pending or not) which I haven’t been able to find anywhere else.
· http://www.ziprealty.com/ My personal favorite. I love being able to save homes into a “favorites” section and get e-mail updates on them. I especially like the mapping feature. Its easy to use and presents great information for browsing quickly. It also hooks into Zillow and Cyberhomes to give you previous sales. Some have complained that their ZipAgent resets their criteria.

Foreclosure and Distressed Property Tracking
· Hotpads This is a new tool that has a really cool mapping feature for the foreclosure information. From the review I read, it gets foreclosure data from RealtyTrac. I haven’t tried the other features yet.
· http://www.foreclosure.com/ The free info is good for monitoring foreclosures and pre-foreclosures. As suggested earlier by someone on this the feature where for monitoring the name of the owner on the pre-foreclosure list is very helpful to see if your landlord is getting a NOD.
· RealtyTrac I haven’t used this site much, but it is often cited as a source of data, so I am assuming there are some redeeming qualities about it.

Individual Home Sale History:
· Sac Bee This is the only place I am able to find recent individual sales information in bulk, for free. Unfortunately, the information it doesn’t go back very far, and there tends to be a couple month lag in updating the data.
· Zillow This site is nice if you are looking at a specific home and want to see its sales history.
· Cyberhomes: Similar to Zillow. Others have said they think the values seem more accurate.