Then and Now
Ten years ago, a search for real estate would have started in the office of a local real estate agent or by just driving around town. At the agent’s office, you would spend an afternoon flipping through pages of active property listings from the local Multiple Listing Service (MLS). After choosing properties of interest, you will spend many weeks touring each property until you found the right one. Finding market data to enable you to assess the asking price would take more time and a lot more driving, and you still might not be able to find all of the information you needed to get really comfortable with a fair market value.
Today, most house searches start on the Internet. A quick keyword search on Google by location will likely get you thousands of results. If you spot a property of interest on a real estate web site, you can typically view photos online and maybe even take a virtual tour. You can then check other Web sites, such as the local county assessor, to get an idea of the property’s value, see what the current owner paid for the property, check the real estate taxes, get census data, school information, and even check out what shops are within walking distance-all without leaving your house!
While the resources on the Internet tend to be convenient and helpful, using them properly can be a challenge because of the volume of information and the difficulty in verifying its accuracy. At the time of writing, a search associated with “Denver real estate” returned 2, 670, 000 Internet sites. Even a neighborhood specific search for real estate can easily return a large number of Web sites. With so many resources online how does an investor effectively use them without getting bogged down or winding up with incomplete or even bad info? Believe it or not, understanding how the business regarding real estate works offline makes it easier to understand on the internet real estate details and strategies, let notice Top real estate agent in Lagos
The Business of Real-estate
Real estate is typically bought and sold either through a licensed realtor or directly by the owner. The vast majority is bought and sold via real estate brokers. (We use “agent” and “broker” to refer to the same professional. ) This is due to their real-estate knowledge as well as experience and also, at least historically, their exclusive access to a database involving active attributes for sale. Access to this database of home listings provided the most efficient way to look for properties.