The nation’s largest homes-for-sale Web site ironically won’t let you search for homes in one of the nation’s most significant housing markets, but it will teach you about residential real estate transactions.
The National Association of Realtors’ revamped Web site hopes to close negotiations with R.E. InfoLink within a couple of months to obtain listings of homes for sale in Southern Alameda, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, Monterey and San Benito counties.
Meanwhile, it’s easy to overlook the glaring void among 1 million homes for sale on the site, especially if you aren’t in the market to buy or sell but want lots of how-to details.
Where NAR’s site shines for consumers is in its library.
That’s largely because much of the content comes from real estate author Peter G. Miller whose own site, OurBroker, got the VRE Site to See nod last time around.
Miller has supplied NAR’s library with reams of information about real estate buying and selling, from accessible housing to zoning law. His works are complemented by those from the Real Estate Educators Association’s 1994 Real Estate Educator of the Year, Julie Garton-Good. It’s a daunting mountain of information to search, but NAR has made it easy.
Use your browser to search from each author’s page to reach any topic in the massive library, or use the site’s click-and-find subject index. Garton-Good’s copy is further subdivided into questions and answers for both buyers and sellers.
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The library includes attorney Craig. E. Buck’s real estate dictionary, and reviews of real estate books. The site has a bookstore of additional recommended books.
Also for consumers, the site includes The Mover’s Toolkit, containing calculators to check moving costs; auto and home insurance; and salaries and crime in various cities. You can also create a time line for your move and find out how much of a mortgage you can afford.
There’s more: The site’s Mortgage and Banking Center can help you find a real estate agent, look up your local real estate association (again, in both cases, not in South Bay areas covered by R.E. InfoLink), read NAR’s news releases and compare mortage, auto and consumer loan rates.
Inside the money center, yet another library, the Resource Library, offers more information about mortgage finance, saving and investing, retirement planning, insurance, consumer fraud, business research and more.
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Go to chicago.tribune.com/go/homes and click Tool kit.