Best Real Estate Websites for WPA? And another RANT! (Pittsburgh: bank owned, foreclosures)

[Hopes]

The real estate websites are driving me insane! I'm looking at the same crap everyday. The search engines are annoying. I want to see EVERYTHING available but many sites limit searches to zip codes or townships. The few that all searches of entire counties don't list everything available from other agencies. The ones that have a large selection don't allow me to search by new listings. As a result, I have to sift through garbage I've already seen for months.

I like Howard Hanna but it doesn't allow me to search new listings only. I like Northwood because I can search by county but the listings are limited. Realtor dot com and Homes dot com have a large selection but don't allow me to search massive areas at once without requiring me to input a zillion townships.

What I've learned during my search is there's not much of a selection in the rural counties. It also seems the prices are higher than they should be. In certain price ranges, I can actually get more for my money in Allegheny County. The taxes might be lower in the rural counties but the housing prices seem to be similar or worse than in Allegheny County. Only the truly stellar houses are a bargain in the rural areas but they are few.

There's a lot of garbage out there. People complain about the Pittsburgh metro houses not being updated. You should see how bad the houses are in the rural areas. Lots and lots of run down and tacky. Every now and then there is a diamond in the rough. I've seen beautiful stone houses with magnificent woodwork in great condition. But all are contingent or under contract by the time I see them! Only recently did I found out that it may be possible to snatch up and steal a contingent property with a cash offer, depending on why it's contingent.

Any ideas on how to get ahead of everyone else? Better websites?

[Kippy]

Trulia allows you to search by county. In addition, you can filter the results by listing date, which allows you to see what new properties have just come on the market.

[Joe Magarac]

My idea: find a good realtor.

I am neither a realtor nor a shill for realtors. I tend to think that the whole realtor/multi-list colossus is an unfair monopoly that is designed to make home buying and selling more expensive than it needs to be, and I've always used the web to find the houses that I've bought. But I have friends who found very good buyer's agents, told them what they were looking for, and asked to be updated by email whenever a house like that came up on the market. The agent would email them once a week - whenever the multi-list got updated - pointing out any houses that fit my friends' description. In this way, they got news of houses before they hit the web and were able to buy something they liked fairly quickly.

Realtors can do more searches on the multi-list than you and I can do on any website, and they get updates on new houses before they are posted on the web. So if you are looking for something that's hard to find, a realtor is probably your best bet.

[PittsburghLlama]

Having a realtor help in your search is certainly a great asset. When my partner and I were searching for a home, we found a place that we liked the look of on one of the sites and just signed up to have it shown to us via that same website. We acquired an excellent realtor by chance (if you'd like his info, let me know), and he was incredibly helpful and amazing. He sat us down and asked us for what we were looking for and would send us emails daily with available properties.
He took us out a few times to look at properties that he thought we'd like as well. He dedicated a lot of time and effort to assist us, and his knowledge was invaluable.

That said, Pittsburgh Moves was definitely the best website out of all of them in our search. As far as listings go, Pittsburgh Moves tends to put forth a bit more information than a lot of the other sites, and seem to have more properties available as well. I am not sure if their search options fit the criteria that you're looking for, though, so this might be useless information to you, haha.

[squarian]

Originally Posted by Hopes

I want to see EVERYTHING available but many sites limit searches to zip codes or townships.

And the ones which do allow searches by specific neighborhood have some very odd definitions of neighborhoods.

[gg]

Find a realtor that will hustle for you. Realtors can search new and can do all those things you want with a couple touches of a button. Seems you have huge geographic perimeters, but want certain things out of a home. Not all realtors will want to deal with that, but some will. If you can't find anyone that will spread out a search that far, get a realtor for the North and one of the South or whatever. I used to enjoy buyers like yourself, but back then gas prices weren't $4 a gallon. You can't blame realtors for not servicing a huge area. Of course the higher your price range the more they will hustle, for the most part. Sad, but true.

[ferraris]

Finding a realtor is the best option. My favorite site so far has been Trulia. You have to filter it so that it doesn't show foreclosures...you'll still see true forecosures (bank owned properties), but it will get rid of all the RealtyTrac scam listings. Trulia provides a link to the listing agency's website as well.

[Hopes]

Thanks for the tips everyone. I'll try Trulia!

Finding a realtor is hard since we're willing to move anywhere. Whenever I talk to a listing agent about a property, I let them know what I'm hoping to find. I talked to one in the Westmoreland/Somerset area. Gave her my email address. Never heard from her. I talked with one in the Titusville area a few weeks ago. I received an email with listings but there were only 10 properties in her 3 county jurisdiction.


Then I stumble across ones that I wish I could pick up and move to larger property. Like this one near New Castle.

Neshannock Twp Real Estate - 15 E HAZELCROFT, Neshannock Twp, PA, 16105

Ignore the ugly carpeting, wallpaper and dark kitchen. Look at the architecture! Seeing things like this give me hope that eventually I'll find something wonderful that meets my criteria someday.


Then I found riverfront property with a dumpy house. It was so cheap we figured we'd tear the house down and build a new one. Then we learned that the river frontage was a 100 foot steep cliff drop down to the water. I imagined my dog chasing a rabbit and flying right off the cliffside.

[Bong477]

I liked pittsburghmoves.com

Worked well for Allegheny county, not sure how well it will meet your needs though.

Ultimately, despite looking diligently myself, the home we bought was found by our realtor, not me.

[greg42]

I find it interesting to use the mapping feature of Howard Hanna. In other words, it shows all results plotted on the map, then you point and click at the map points for more info on the property. (Specifically start with this on the home page by clicking on Hanna Mapping.) This works well for searching in areas, and you can constrain the results by price, county, type of property and other options. You can't constrain by age of listing though, true.

Even 9 years ago I did a lot of my own searching, but once I had talked to an agent I was getting emails. I'm not sure, but I think my ultimate buy came from one of the emails because I saw the listing sooner than on the web. I'm sure the sellers were happy; that house couldn't have been on the market more than a week or two. I always drove by the places first and ruled them in or out based on that, before deciding to have a look inside.