Where do buyers search for house listings?

[Bill Keegan]

Originally Posted by emanon

Bill, I know you work at Weichert so I won't hold that against you but Weichert.com is a very good site and does offer a lot of listings with plenty of info and photos.

E

Thanks for that. The purpose of this thread is to see where people are out looking. I think I know most of the sites, but don't want to skew the result by putting out my thoughts. This way, I'll get a feel for the more popular sites, and if someone throws out one or two that I didn't think were being used, it'll benefit me & my seller clients, as I'll know to go advertise there as well.

[Union]

I look in the Asbury Park Press Newspaper and Newpapers web sites and other links like:
NJ.com: Everything Jersey
www.Homes.injersey.com (broken link)
New Jersey jobs,real estate,autos,personals,for sale,community,and events
craigslist classifieds: jobs, housing, personals, for sale, services, community, events, forums
SILive: Everything Staten Island
Classifieds & Want Ads
besides the regular JerseyshoreMLS & realtor.com
This weekend was a busy weekend for people being out and about looking for homes at the Jersey shore
Had an open house today and had people come. A realtor friend of mine said the phone are starting to ring.
We had great weather ( during the day) for house hunters. One of my friends put a contract on a new home and got a GREAT DEAL! Good luck weather buying or selling everyone.

[hc7612]

I should have thrown Weichert some props as well! I do use them alot. The have the option to look at "New Construction Only", which helps me tremendously. Also, they seem to have more photos listed.

[vmcpc]

i've used Realtor.com quite a bit but also...
gsmls.com
trulia.com
zillow.com
any/all real estate broker sites (weichert/ c21...)
after a while everything just looks the same!

[Gravy Boat]

We bought a house recently. I used realtor.com, craigslist, and weichert's site. Weichert had by far the best realtor's site. In contrast, ReMax's is awful.

[DodgeViper01]

My clients tend to tell me that they looked at the following:

REALTOR.com - Real Estate Listings & Homes For Sale
Homes.com - Real Estate and Homes For Sale.
For Sale By Owner, homes for sale, houses, real estate, for sale
Local Real Estate Websites
Agent Websites

[CuCullin]

Personally, here was my process.

Once I established the area, I began searching regularly on gsmls, real estate classifieds on nj.com, and the various fsbo sites. Additionally, I used google maps with the real estate search addon (which didn't work perfectly btw).

Additionally, I went out driving around the town with my gps and my digi cam. Whenever I saw something for sale that looked like it may be in my range, I took a pic of the house, a pic of the sign (for the phone number) and recorded my position in the gps along with notes (in the gps) of the corresponding picture number. Went back to google maps when I got home, plugged in my data, and recorded what I found. Then I'd call, add that information (price, br's, etc) into google maps to the various saved locations. I would change the color of saved locations that didn't have what I wanted or were too expensive for me.

I then used people to help me search by going to forums (like this) and letting people in the area know the general idea of what I was looking for. Interestingly enough, this method found me my new home before it even hit the market! I went on vacation, it was listed the day before I came back, I contacted the agent, and set something up for the morning after I got home (a Sunday). My new neighbors told me about my new house