Gone are the days when real estate agents were the only way to track down potential leads on homes you’d like to buy. Thanks to the World Wide Web and the capability of Web 2.0, you can now conduct a surprising amount of research on home sales from the comfort of your own home. In many cases, using Web 2.0 can put you in touch with deals that most real estate agents would never come across. Learn how to use Web 2.0 to your benefit so you can locate the ideal new home for your needs.

What is Web 2.0?

Before you start your search, you should know that Web 2.0 is simply a way to refer to the current day applications and interconnectivity of the World Wide Web.

After the 2001 collapse of the dot-com bubble, the World Wide Web evolved into a second generation of web development and design. In many ways, Web 2.0 refers to the World Wide Web as you currently know it – a place of information sharing, communication, and collaboration.

Essentially, Web 2.0 sites are likely to offer you a greater number and wider variety of home sale listings than you’d find in a place like your local newspaper or even through a local real estate agent.

Top real estate listings on the web

Below you’ll find some of the most comprehensive and helpful Web 2.0 sites.

• Zillow:  Found at www.zillow.com, this real estate site does an excellent job of revealing information on houses previously known only to those in the inner real estate world. Essentially, Zillow is an excellent alternative to the Multiple Listing Service available only to members of the Association of Realtors. In addition, Zillow provides estimates (or as it calls them, “Zestimates” on the value of more than 80 million different homes.
• Yahoo! Real Estate:  Located at http://realestate.yahoo.com, the Yahoo! Real Estate site has a search feature that allows you to search for houses facing foreclosure. You can also specify your price range and your preferred number of bedrooms and bathrooms.
• Cyberhomes:  Established at www.cyberhomes.com, this real estate site backed by Fidelity National Financial is the place to go for detailed, proprietary information on home sales across the country. Cyberhomes not only offers information on houses for sale, it also offers key statistics relating to the neighborhoods where those houses are for sale. Such information includes the rental vacancy of the area, the unemployment rate, and whether the local market has enough strength to rebound from the current subprime mortgage calamity.
• Trulia:  Found at www.trulia.com, this search engine geared toward real estate has regular updates on foreclosure listings. You can scan what the site calls “heat maps” which allow you to compare sales prices across neighborhoods. There is also a chat forum available that lets you pose questions and get answers regarding homes in different locations.
• Realtor.com:  This www.realtor.com site is the official site of the National Association of Realtors. It provides a searchable database with over 3 million home listings. The site also allows you to see recent home sales for various areas and offers a realtor locator service.
• Redfin:  The site http://redfin.com is a classic Web 2.0 site that matches local real estate brokers with online real estate searches. The site employs the local agents and claims to help you save as much as $10,000 is transaction fees. Redfin also combines historical data with MLS listings via mapped integration that allows you to search criteria like price, square feet, and the number of bedrooms or bathrooms in a house.

Advantages and disadvantages of using Web 2.0 to find homes

Ultimately, Web 2.0 opens up quite a few more possibilities to home buyers. Provided you are comfortable accessing information via the Internet, you can find out everything you need to know about relocating to certain areas.

The only downside to Web 2.0 applications is that you are largely left on your own to do the research. If you don’t care for searching across the World Wide Web to locate the most ideal house and price for you, a real estate agent is your next best option.

Alternately, if you’d like the best of both worlds then consider working with a real estate agent while still conducting some research of your own using Web 2.0 sites. When you find houses that are appealing to you, you can easily pass the details to your real estate agent to have him or her check the legitimacy of the website claim.

Remember this is still your search

In the end, keep in mind that a search for your new home is a search that belongs to you. Don’t let a real estate agent or a website sway you into pursuing a house you’re not wholly comfortable with. Be clear on your needs and price and use Web 2.0 sites as tools that bring you closer to your ultimate goal:  the perfect house of your own.