Real Estate Research

Finding Your New Hometown

Our favorite real estate research tool by far, is www.Realtor.com. This is the official site of the National Association of Realtors. Start on the homepage by typing in any town and state. Set the criteria you want, such as maximum price, minimum number of bedrooms, bathrooms and such. Then hit enter and see what comes up.

These are all the MLS listings as entered into the system by real estate agents across the country. You need to play around with this site to get the most value out of it. There are ways to further refine your search, for example. Maybe you want to buy a duplex, to live in one unit and rent out the other. You can search for only multi-family properties.

You can also search for homes with a minimum square footage. You can search for just farms, or just homes on corner lots. Look for the button that says, "more search options," and experiment with the various settings to get to know the system.

You can also search the listings of individual real estate offices if they have a website. Sometimes they will have homes that are not in the MLS listings, or were just recently listed. To find these sites, use Google or another search engine. Just type in the name of the city plus "real estate," and you're sure to find something useful.

Of course, having low-cost homes isn't the only important criteria. Whatever your other criteria are, there are more ways than ever to research and find towns that meet them. For example, here are some websites that can help:

http://www.weatherbase.com - Want a look at the local climate of a prospective town? Click on the link for the United States, then on the state you are interested in, then on the city. They cover most towns with a population of 5,000 or more. You can see what the average high is for each month of the year, how many inches of snow or rain they get, and much more

http://www.city-data.com - Want all the statistics on a town? Click on the state, then the town, and you'll find everything from photos of the area to crime statistics. There is a wealth of information here. Depending on the town, you'll usually find a list of the schools and colleges, average home values, lists of radio and television stations, average family income, and more.

http://www.ohwy.com - Another good source of information on cities and towns. There is usually a short history and then a few statistics for most cities in the United States. From the home page, click on a state on their map, and then find the link to "cities." That will bring up a list, which usually has even the smallest towns on it. They mostly have basic statistics, but there are links to more information.

http://www.bestplaces.net - This site has city profiles, and climate information like other sites, though it is not quite as as comprehensive. What it has that the others don't is numerous ways to compare cities. Using the links on the home page, you can find pages where you can compare the crime rates of where you live now and where you are thinking of moving. You can also compare the cost of living in several categories. This is a fun site to do research on.

http://www.fbi.gov - This is the official FBI website. Although difficult to navigate, you can find more comprehensive crime statistics here. We always consider the type of crimes too. A higher rate of burglary isn't as threatening as a higher assault rate, for example.

I purposefully haven't included too many websites, because sites come and go. These particular sites are likely to be around a while, but you'll always be able to find good information online in any case. Just use Google or MSN or Yahoo to search. Entering just the city name, or the city and state will give you a lot of material to peruse. Enter the city name and "photos" and you can see what the place looks like. The internet makes it easy to do real estate research.

This chapter continues here: Nice Towns