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Real Estate
![]() ![]() ![]() Want a good overview of the housing market in a given location? We're not thinking about buying or selling, but we learned a lot about the housing market in our Web travels. There were, by one search engine's count, about 4,000 real estate Web sites, the vast majority offering strictly local coverage, even when their names suggest national coverage. We present here sites that have, at the least, a multi-state view. They're good research tools, too, with lots of links to local and regional real estate agencies. Many allow you to post your own property for sale. Because listings are fairly sparse at this point, the Web won't drive agencies out of business for a while, but it's a good place to start looking.
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If you define community as having neighbors and bemoan modern subdivisions where residents don't know the people next door, you might want to check out Cohousing Network. The idea, it seems, is to have group housing combining private quarters with extensive shared facilities for recreation, workshops, child care, and such. You'll see an archive, a resource guide, and a directory of "Intentional Communities." If the whole thing sounds to you like a reversion to college dorm life, better skip it.
If you are contemplating building a house yourself, look at Your New House. It concerns a syndicated TV show of the same name, taped on location at new-home construction sites. Each episode includes "Mortgage Moments," covering the issue of financing your dream digs. On-line, you can find show transcripts, a newsletter, and lists of tips covering a wide variety of topics, from handling mail fraud to paint spills. There's also a listing of show times and channels.
If you want to live in South Florida or the Caribbean and money is no object, then by all means check out WaterFront/Sunshine Dreams Real Estate, which caters to those seeking luxury homes, with text in English, French, and Italian. If you're in the market for an entire town, look at the listing for Lazy Lake, Florida, being offered for $15 million.
HOUSEsite makes good use of graphics, presenting you with a clickable U.S. map, but only five states had listings when we looked. Those states were well presented, though: From a state map, you drill down to a regional or metropolitan map, then to a town map and its listings. The listings consist of thumbnail pictures and prices, and clicking the thumbnail would call up full details. It will be a fine system if it can become truly national.
PalNet is fairly empty, but it has big plans. We saw only 10 metropolitan areas listed, but scores of others were under construction. The listings are arranged by price, and some include a color photo and a listing of rooms and their sizes. This site has potential.
Despite a misleading name, www.homeplan.com (don't type in the URL, it'll take you to the wrong page) will be of interest to you if, like Bill Gates, you want to have your house built from scratch. It boasts a collection of links to architects, designers, builders, landscape artists, and sources of home automation networking systems, plus sources of more common home products like flooring and appliances.
Relocation rather than real estate is the theme at bestagents.com. Of course, relocating usually involves real estate transactions, and the site offers to line you up with agents to both sell your old place and find a new one.
The Home Buyer Real Estate Service had listings for 20 states, although some had only one offering each.
Unfortunately, the Prestige Real Estate Listing Service is a typical example of the status of many national real estate classified ad sites: Listings are $12 for one month or $20 for six months, and there were only five listings.
Equally sad was the altEstate. For $85 you can run your ad, including a color photo, for six months. But there were only eight listings, although some were whole housing developments.
Homes Online is still an empty nest. We saw an elaborate search engine that's typical of local sites: You search according to style, size, price range, number of bathrooms, and size of lot. But as far as we could tell, there were only three listings.
At the Internet Real Estate Network you can list your house free for a month, or pay $3 to add a photo. Agents can list themselves for various fees. Again, an elaborate search engine sits atop slim pickings.
In England, we found PropertyFind, a buyer's agency. "We work on the basis that we can find any type of property as long as it exists," they state. We doubt nonexistent property is a big problem in the United Kingdom, but we're pretty sure they'll search on your property criteria.
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Copyright (c) 1995 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company is prohibited. Internet Life and the Internet Life logo are trademarks of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. |
![]() QUICK CLICK! Accnet Homeward Bound Properties OnLine For Sale By Owner Connection Cohousing Network Your New House WaterFront/Sunshine Dreams Real Estate HOUSEsite PalNet www.homeplan.com bestagents.com The Home Buyer Real Estate Service Prestige Real Estate Listing Service altEstate Homes Online Internet Real Estate Network PropertyFind |