Where do buyers search for house listings? (for sale, real estate)

[Bill Keegan]

I asked this question over in the Real Estate Professionals forum too, but I wanted to get a more local perspective, just from residents of the great state of New Jersey. If you are looking for a house, there's a whole bunch of research to do, and a variety of places to do it. Let's assume you're past that. You've done all the research, found all the facts, computed the commute times, talked to school officials, checked out the shopping, let the kiddies test out the playgrounds, chosen the train station, etc, etc. You've narrowed it down to a town, a school district, perhaps even a neighborhood.
Where do you go to search for the actual properties for sale?
I was going to list a few possibilities here, but decided that I'd rather not color the responses at all.
Thanks in advance to those of you who choose to respond.

[luckyshoes]

If you've gotten that far, you start talking to an agent and get the MLS listings sent from them. If you've done that much research, the internet isn't going to do it for you anymore, not enough detail anywhere.

[Obrero]

Well, we just bought a house. Mostly we got links from our agent but I also looked daily on realtor.com as well as FSBO.com and forsalebyowner.com. In addition I looked in the local paper for FSBO listings and the Record and Ledger. I drove around the town we were looking in almost every Sunday to see if there were any new open houses or FSBO open houses. I checked for flyers at the local supermarkets and library. I also talked to everyone we knew in the town (mostly parents of kids in school) and told them what type of house we were looking for. I got so many leads of houses before they were listed with agents, but none worked out.

[hc7612]

Personally, we have sent off for "The Real Estate Book" and "Homes and Land." But I find searching online with Realtor.com (their advanced search), the most helpful. But I have found as a rule, that even the nicest photos can be very misleading. You have to go and check the neighborhood out for yourself, everytime. Just because it seems to have everything you want, you have to consider the surrounding houses, road noise, etc...

[juliann1977]

We started casually looking one Sunday last winter in the Star Ledger Sunday homes section. We then went to the sales offices of a couple properties--which we didn't care for. Next, I did a search on Weichert's website for new construction in Monmouth County. I found something promising, and we then went to the sales office at the development to look at models. We liked them, negotiated a contract with our lawyer's help, and the rest was history.

[Machinist]

Garden State MLS, Property Search (http://new.gsmls.com/public/selectaCounty.jsp - broken link)

[joe moving]

I used GSMLS and NJMLS, realtor.com is slow to update.

[BLUEDIAMOND64]

Check out realtor.com and plug in the appropriate information.

[BLUEDIAMOND64]

Hi Bill,

There are actual websites that give you the information you are looking for. I will try to find them and give them to you. I actually found 2 several months ago and passed it along to our agent. She was very impressed and it helped her to give information to her perspective customers.

[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