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My sister is looking for a very specific retirement home in several states. She doesn't know all the towns in these states but she wants to see ALL listings that fit her specific criteria, with key words.
I, too, will be searching in a few years for a very specific kind of home in several different states. I don't have any specific locations in mind. My key words will be SMALL HOUSE (less than 1200 sf) - NO YARD - NICE NEIGHBORHOOD.
We have tried realtor.com, Trulia, and specific realtor sites but they all require that you punch in a specific city or town and a radius that includes close-by locations. But we do not at this stage want to be specific.
Does any realtor or anyone else know how to do a criteria search - on what websites??
Search terms like "small house" and "no yard" aren't likely to work on some (maybe most) MLS's from which most of such sites draw. On ours, for example, you'd need to look for "less than X sq. ft." for small house and either less than X sq. ft. lot or less than X acres to get no yard (or search for a townhouse or condo). "Nice neighborhood" is not something that's going to be on an MLS because it's so very subjective - what's a nice neighborhood for someone who loves HOA's, for example, would be hell on earth for someone who can't stand them, and vice versa. This may be part of your difficulty besides the fact that most searches do require that you specify at least a county or counties so they know which MLS to pull from (there are hundreds, if not thousands, of MLS's, to pull from in the country - my broker, for an example, has several offices from Harker Heights to Killeen which means that he belongs to 7 different MLS's).
Doesn't help a lot, I know, but at least it explains why you're running into this problem.
Nice neighborhood? How exactly would any site be able to identify this?
I don't know how to do the OP's search across the entire country; however, in the MLS I often run searches based on the agent remarks (the write-ups brokers write about the houses). So, for example, within the Chicago area I run a search that looks for "train" and/or "metra" in the remarks. So, if an agent wrote "nice neighborhood" or "great neighborhood" or whatever in the remarks, that's something the OP could search against.
Search terms like "small house" and "no yard" aren't likely to work on some (maybe most) MLS's from which most of such sites draw. On ours, for example, you'd need to look for "less than X sq. ft." for small house and either less than X sq. ft. lot or less than X acres to get no yard (or search for a townhouse or condo). "Nice neighborhood" is not something that's going to be on an MLS because it's so very subjective - what's a nice neighborhood for someone who loves HOA's, for example, would be hell on earth for someone who can't stand them, and vice versa. This may be part of your difficulty besides the fact that most searches do require that you specify at least a county or counties so they know which MLS to pull from (there are hundreds, if not thousands, of MLS's, to pull from in the country - my broker, for an example, has several offices from Harker Heights to Killeen which means that he belongs to 7 different MLS's).
Doesn't help a lot, I know, but at least it explains why you're running into this problem.
I know you're right...the key words would most likely be more specific to the home....like no pool, yes fireplace, yes basement, yes porch, yes walkable to amenities. When I do searches on realtor sites, as soon as I put in "basement" (as in wanted), nothing at all comes up...seems like being specific in any way eliminates all possibilities including those with the desired amenity.
I did find a New Hampshire realtor site that is all about "small houses" and it's pretty good. Cannot find any others with this small house search option.
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