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Before we discussed the aspects of the real estate website Zillow. Here we will discuss some other popular real estate sites that can help you with buying and selling

Realtybaron.com is similar to the idea behind Lendingtree.com. You place your property up and realtors bid for your business.

Ziprealty.com Takes the aspects of banking online to realty. Here because there are no bricks and mortar you are allowed to save on commissions when selling and getting cash when buying.

Owners.com This site helps you sell your house (which many are trying hard to do right now) by going through online listings as a classified ad.

Redfin.com Similar to ziprealty in that it gives money back to buyers and then charges a flat $2,000 fee to sellers. Business is done online.

Things seem to get more difficult as we move along this home buying process.

The home sellers have dragged their feet and basically taken up another week by not responding to our requests from our real estate attorney. Then we wanted to have our own electrician come in along with a floor and cabinet contractor. No dice–they could not do it at the time we needed so I have to do this myself (I have none of the above credentials).

Even though they have not gotten back to our real estate lawyer they have said that their new construction is 1-2 weeks behind schedule and they asked our real estate agent if we would allow theym to stay for that period of time and pay our mortgage while there. There are a few problems with this scenario for us. First, is the legal ramifications if something breaks while they are living in our home after closing? Next, we have a renter to take over our current apartment lease–we will lose that renter if we extend the time at all. Three, the sellers have not been terribly cooperative and now they want us to bend over backwards to help them. Lastly, we would lose the great rate we just locked.
We switched mortgage companies for the second time because they offered an excellent rate that would save us $40-45 a month for the life of the mortgage. So there is some good news to this.

In the meantime, my wife and I have started packing our belongings and hope this time we actually get the house.

The sellers have replied to our letter requesting some things to be done before the house closing date. All conditions were agreed to, but we are asking for more documentation on a minor mold situation and a potentially large electricity problem. We are having our electrician come in and then we will compare his evaluation to the sellers’ electrician. These issues should be formalities, but we will know a lot more in the next few days.

Also, we have secured mortgage financing and have locked a good rate. The home appraiser has visited the house so we are on track to close on the house in just a couple weeks.

Business 2.0 recommends some books and websites that can be helpful in learning about real estate.

1. Irrational Exuberance (2005) by Robert Schiller: Details the economic and psychological that can bring about a bubble.
2. Real Estate Finance & Investments: Risks and Opportunities (2004) by Peter Linneman: Textbook on professional real estate investing.
3. Journal of Real Estate Research Uses hard evidence and research to make everyday real estate decisions
4. About Real Estate Free e-newsletter discussing current real estate topics.
5. Matrix: Interpreting the Real Estate Economy Blog on the latest and greatest on real estate trends.
6. Housing Doom Housing Bubble Blog Gives the ramifications of the ghousing bubble.

Friday was the final day of the attorney review period stated in ourcontract to purchase the home. We had bid on the house and agreed upon a purchase price with the sellers last Sunday. The Tuesday after we had the inspection and had hired a real estate attorney. There were some issues that came up during the home inspection and we passed that information on to our lawyer so he could draw up a letter to the sellers. The sellers agreed for workers to come in and check out our concerns and we will have a response from them on Monday. They will need to decide from what the workers said if they are willing to fix the issues or pay us money to fix it ourselves. If this negotion goes well it should be clear sailing until the closing.

We took another break from house shopping after we were fired. In the meantime we still scoured the internet for available places in our town. Our plan was to buy in town and then eventually go to the suburbs. Well, we took a 180 and decided for the suburbs right now because it had taken so long as is that we were eating away at our city-time and we would need to move soon after buying a home in the city. We decided on a suburb and then found a place in the town next to it to the east. We were very interested, but upon looking further into it we saw that there were too many potential problems. We continue to look in the original city until last week. On a whim, we decided to look in the town next to it to the west. The first one we saw we liked. We have looked at it twice now and now are in the midst of bidding on it.

Previously on “The Annals of Buying a Home”

During the earnest money loss debacle we had decided we needed to take a break. It was the middle of August 2005 and we were getting married in December. The entire time we were still looking online for homes, but we were busy and still felt burned. In February of 2006 we began looking casually at homes and going to some open houses on our own. We were weary about our real estate agent because we thought she handled the earnest money situation very poorly. However, she was reommended by a good friend so we went forward with her in March/April of 2006. In the following months we went throught the buying process again and again and they fell through for one reason or another. We decided against countering an offer by a seller of a condo our agent calling the mutual friend and told her she no longer wanted to represent us. Basically, we were fired by our real estate agent because we did not buy a place quick enough. This lead to another break in our search.

Previous Annals of Buying a Home

My wife and I have been searching for a home for about 18 months. We began in May of 2005 (the real estate market was booming). In that time we have seen the real estate boom and now seeing the bust. We have also changed our minds on what city we want to live. Most of all we have learned the lessons of the School of Hard Knocks.

At one time we thought we had purchased a condo. We had agreed on a price, but after that the wheels fell off. The lawyer review period came and went and our lawyer was not returning calls. We had an inspection and it brought up major concerns. We had already put earnest money up and the sellers did not seem too concerned about of safety concerns. Eventually, we fired the lawyer and the real estate agebt got us all to meet to iron out our issues. After the meeting we left thinking the sellers would fix our saftey concerns. Well, the next day we discovered them offering $1,000 and to clean the fireplace. The safety issues were approximately $10,000 of things that we refused to move in until taken care of. We rejected the offer and it was over. Not yet, because our lawyer had flaked on us the sellers said they were going to keep or earnest money. This began the month of stress. For the next month were worked on trying to recoup that money and eventually got the money back, but we felt burned. This was only our first experience trying to buy a home.