Sound Off! Tell us WHY we need addresses in our home searches! (Birmingham: for sale, city hall)

[convextech]

I won't go look at a property with a realtor til I've had a chance to do what I call a drive-by. this tells me if I'm going to like the area, the neighborhood, are there any pubs nearby, trivia bars, etc. I will not waster a realtor's time doing this. Sometimes I drive up and see the house, and go, "no way". I don't even want to see the interior. Once I pick out the houses I want to see up close, THEN I get with a realtor. this saves their time and gas, and by then they already know I am interested instead of out for a Sunday drive.

[Seth Parker]

I'll be taking these, along with the other ones I have from other places to the membership next week. It would be great if I could get just a few more. I was hoping to get 50 comments, and I'm pretty close. ANY more would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
Seth

[Southlander]

Here's a pet peeve of mine: the map selections.
We are looking for a new (to us) house in Decatur. Now, if you're looking in Huntsville, you can chose NW, NE, SW, SE, and east Huntsville. Same for Madison.
You can choose Limestone County, or Athens City.
But the ONLY choice for Decatur is "Morgan County."
I don't want a house in Hartselle, Trinity, Falkville or Lacey's Spring. I want one in Decatur. But no! That's not a choice. Yes, I know I can select the schools to narrow the choices. But it's very annoying!

[marmac]

I certainly want to do a "drive by" before contacting a realtor.

I will be moving from Minnesota to NE Alabama in the near future (retired) and have been checking many houses out that meet our criteria on paper.

After the wife and I do a "drive by", we then will contact a realtor with a shorter list and narrow our selection by actually visiting the houses.

Yes, a "drive by" will save the realtor a lot of time cuz no amount of persuasion will get me inside a house that doesn't pass my "drive by"

I have to give praise to Dekalb County for their realty site. Not only do their listings give the address, they also have the map available to click on to get driving directions.

We were down last November and did a few "drive bys" . I was impressed with the majority of houses we had on our list.

Also, the Dekalb site rates every houses' condition on the lising---------Excellent, very good, good, average, fair, and poor.

In summary--------------yes, please give an address or you will waste a lot of time and gas on me if you insist on going on the "drive bys"

[Charles]

I am also pretty sure we can't get recent sales data - or at least not easily. This site (City-Data) has a neat tool from which you can pull sales data by entering an address (go to the main City-Data web site and type in a zip code to check it out. It also didn't work for Huntsville.) We had pretty crummy luck getting recent sales over the past six months when we were looking.

I brought this up in an earlier thread:

http://www.city-data.com/forum/4177742-post15.html

[ionlife]

Oh, that is still ticking me off! I'd love to see what the sales data is--I could find it easy in the Washington Post--why is it soooo not easy to find here?

[vakinderegg]

FYI...overstock.com has a nifty real estate section. This section gives addresses and square footage of homes. I looked up the houses in my area. I wish I would have known about the site when I was looking for a house! Valleymls has the ability to use more options, but at least this gives you addresses and square footage of the homes.

[Seth Parker]

one place I recommend to people is Hotpads.com - they have around 1,000 HSV properties with addresses there as well. Here's the part that ticks me off:

Those listings come from the magazine Homes & Land. When you do an ad with H&L, they require that you give them the address, then they compile all of the listings and send out the feed to various places; Which is the reason there is only a certain percentage of the total homes available in HSV on the sites.

Does the majority of our Realtor membership not know that this happens? What else would be the reasoning for having the addresses removed from the full listing feed, but happily displayed in the H&L feed? This is a point that I'm going to bring up in my presentation.

If they are diligent enough, people CAN find almost ANY address on any home. It is just a complete pain in the butt. How does it make Realtors look, when we appear to be impeding this process? Not good at all. I've never understood the logic. Like it or not, some people don't like Realtors, and I don't think that this helps the cause very much at all.

[Seth Parker]

I just went to the Huntsville Association of Realtors and talked about getting addresses for the public. They basically told me that it would be best if I could speak with the agents that don't want addresses shown and try to work out something directly with them, and then bring it to the board. So, I'm going to attend the last Membership Meeting of the Year on 10/21/08 to bring it up for a vote again and see what will happen.

Aside from that, I've been reading the NAR v. DoJ settlement from May 27th, 2008 regarding the display of information on agent VOWs (Virtual Office Website). By no means do I have a "legal" mind, but when I read it, I can't help but believe that it specifically states that addresses must be provided unless the seller requests otherwise. If any of you want to read it, CLICK HERE FOR THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS LINK and tell me what you guys think it says.

Under "May 27, 2008", read the PDFs of Proposed Final Order and Exhibit A. Don't worry, they're not long (about 12 pages each, doublespaced).

Any feedback would be great.

[Southlander]

Good luck! And don't give up if they turn you down this time. Keep trying. My friend who's looking at Huntsville is getting very frustrated with her agent not wanting to give her addresses. She just wants to drive by the house and get an idea of the community. The agent won't give her the address without asking several times to make an appointment to show it to her.
She doesn't want to look at the house unless she likes the neighborhood first. And she's a former real estate agent herself!
Very frustrating!