Finding the right house is one of the hardest parts of decision making.
When choosing a house, I use the 3 Ls: light, location, lot. These 3 elements can’t be changed, and are critical to your decision. Floor plans can be changed, appliances updated but you can’t change the light, location or lot.
There are several websites that will allow you to search for homes based on some fundament criteria like number of bedrooms and bathrooms. We believe that the home search should go far beyond that.
For a basic home search, start with
https://www.realtor.com/realestateforsale
A buyer and their agent should be able to see the features of the neighborhood, house, floor plan before visiting any homes, by leveraging data that is already publicly accessible. A good Agent will preview the home, or at the very least the information available, before taking you to see the home.
On Realtor.com, you can also find additional data if you know where to look for it. You will find a walk ability score, the ability to search for schools (and the school’s associated rating on the Great Schools website) and you can even see the price of near by homes.
Other things to consider are:
a. Resources: being able to search for shops, parks, restaurants by distance
b. Distance to freeways
c. Demographics
d. Crime data
e. Megan’s law https://www.meganslaw.ca.gov/Disclaimer.aspx
An agent is not incentivized to give you these resources, as narrowing down your search criteria means narrowing down possible purchases.
Each neighborhood, within each city, can have vastly different cultures. Being able to capture that and give the buyer foresight into what the feel of that community is, is invaluable.
A great place to start this search is on Realtor.com and look for the neighborhoods link. Find it here:
https://www.realtor.com/local/
Social media sites like NextDoor, capture events and news that are happening within a geographical neighborhood, but you can only access the site once you live in the community. Registration requires address verification.