Real Estate 2.0

Relocating a family of eight (four humans, four felines) across the country is an incredibly daunting task. We have a home to sell here in California and of course have to find a new home in our new state, arrange for movers, weed our stuff, arrange for travel, weed our stuff, end my current employment and (did I mention?) weed our stuff. All this before actually making the move, re-painting and re-carpeting the new house if necessary, even before one box is opened on the other end. I don't even want to think about the added magnitude that this endeavor will suddenly take on if we don't find a new house that we like in time.

And the paperwork. Oh. My. God. The trees wave and groan in dreaded anticipation of the mounds of paper wasted in this process.

Making our burden a little lighter (I think, anyway) are a few tools that we did not have at our disposal when we made our first cross-country trek from Kentucky to California, 6 years ago:

Yahoo Real Estate - this website is still rather 1.0: it's possible to save interesting listings to a portfolio and even add a note to each listing (only once it's in your portfolio, though), but a portfolio cannot be ranked or shared. Still, it's connected with the Multiple Listing Service in the area that is searched and so provides access to many listing details and photos. For some strange reason, though, it's mute when it comes to year built and is only as good as the details and photos that are put in on the other end. A pet peeve of mine regarding the MLS Is Its Habit Of Captializing Every Damn Word In A Listing. I chafe at this. Video would be nice, too. Realtors, get your act together! [NB: I suspect that many of these complaints are foibles of the local Prudential web site that I'm directed to after searching Yahoo Real Estate and that larger cities' web sites function better. There is also not a Google maps mashup with the MLS that I need, though there are several Google maps/MLS mashups out there. Very, very cool.]

U.S. Zip Code/Google Maps mashup - this site was integral to locating exactly where in our new city to search for real estate listings, allowing me to do a single zip code search rather than a city-wide search, narrowing the results set considerably.

Live.com's birds-eye view - Wow. The inside of a house is only half the picture, and we have been able to glean additional information about listings by using the oblique aerial photography available at this site. It takes a bit of work to figure out which house is the one in the listing, though--the pinpoint for an address is usually off by a few feet, so it's important to compare the front elevation photo in a real estate listing with the aerial photo in the search results. Once the right house is located, an accurate pushpin can be added to the map. I created a "collection" of pushpins for our favorite listings--the collection ranked in order of preference and is annotated with notes and even the URL of the MLS listing.

Google's Docs & Spreadsheets - I created a spreadsheet containing the addresses and details of our preferred listings and shared it with our realtor (who, it turns out, doesn't have nor want a google account--this makes her Realtor 1.0, I guess) and with my sister, who is scouting listings for us and letting us know whether the place smells like wet dog or has a moldy basement. A bit anal, but man, there are a lot of details to keep on top of. One complaint: Google occasionally inexplicably thinks I've logged out; I've lost some changes that way. Grr! We also have a Google doc serving as the checklist of things that must be done before we move.