Are the Online Real Estate Tools Better Than Meeting with a Realtor?
It’s one thing to buy a shirt online that you’ve never seen or tried on in-person, but another entirely if you try to apply that buying technique to a house. Looking at online listings is a helpful first step in the home-buying process. Buying a home without viewing it yourself in person (and preferably with a skilled realtor) is just asking for a raw deal.
Online Listings Can Help You Find Your Groove
When you first consider buying a home, you may not have a clue what you’re looking for. Browsing MLS listings is a great way to start figuring out what you like, what you need and what’s available in your price range.
Online Listings Help Narrow Your To-See List
Looking at homes online is an easy way to narrow down the list of homes you want to visit in-person, saving you the time and trouble of visiting homes you wouldn’t be interested in anyway. Did you click on a seemingly dreamy online listing just to discover a house with too few bedrooms, a terrible layout or the need for a budget-breaking number of updates? Great! You only wasted a few minutes rejecting it rather than an hour or more driving to and touring the property.
Online Listings Can Be Deceiving
You know better than to expect that the burger you buy from a fast food joint isn’t going to be the slow-motion, beaded with droplets of pure freshness, Technicolor dream meal you saw in the commercial. So why would you assume that a home you see online will live up to its advertisement? That’s what a listing really is: a convincing, and sometimes deceiving, advertisement meant to attract buyers.
In-Person Visits Are Absolutely Essential
Online browsing should be followed by hiring a competent, trustworthy realtor and visiting prospective homes in-person. Why? Because there are so many things an online listing can’t or won’t show you. Online listings will use highly edited, professional photos to make rooms appear bigger and cleaner than they are. It’s critical that you visit homes in-person to get an accurate and detailed impression of the home. This can only be effective with an actual realtor.
eXp Realty—The Results Team—is ready to help you buy or sell your home! Stop on by our location at 2623 N. Walnut St, Bloomington, IN 47404. Or call us at: (812)822-2746.