# Thoughts on real estate shopping online



## Trailsend (Apr 20, 2012)

When we made the decision to sell our property in Missouri to relocate closer to family in New England, we knew it would not happen overnight. We were prepared to do the research we needed to do in order to find our next home. The interest in our property was immediate so off we went on our quest!

While we have not sold our place yet, we have driven approx 7000 miles over 2 years to see homes in person that we had seen online. What an eye opening experience! Very rarely do pictures depict the reality. Out of hundreds of properties we have driven to, we have seen 3 that we even kept on our short list. What a disappointment! The crazy part is that we do not even care which state we live in, NY, NH, VT, MA or ME. We thought we would find so many properties that we'd have trouble choosing! All I can say is thank goodness we haven't sold ours yet!

The pictures we use in our ads are not a true depiction of our property either but that is only because you cannot capture the beauty and serenity of our private oasis in pictures. 

And so our search continues.......


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## elizaloo (Jul 5, 2010)

Thank you for that perspective. DH and I are figuring to 'retire' to somewhere in TN in the next few years. We scroll through online real estate sites ALL of the time and are planning several jaunts to the state to look at property to be sure it's where we want to be.

We fall in 'love' with some houses and joke about what we would have to do to 'make it ours' and we are looking forward to the house search. Sounds like we will have our hands full in the coming years finding that 'perfect' house! 

Is price a factor? I mean as in, do you have a wide range or pretty narrow? I have found that while we started out thinking that we could make it without a mortgage at all........the nicer houses where we could just move in and be DONE mean we're increasing our search parameters all of the time. In fact we are most likely going to just buy land and have a house built for what we 'want' in our 'retirement home'.

Good luck in your ongoing search.


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## Rocky Fields (Jan 24, 2007)

I concur with you. 

Realtor's MLS ad listings have a habit of showing only photos that strategically make every property look like a dream palace...a form of misleading fraud. When helping a relative look for a house, I confronted the real estate agent about this and she said "Of course we're going to show the property in the best light!" She thought it was funny! I didn't appreciate her evasive answers and wasting my time and 3 hours of driving to see a dump.


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## Mike CHS (Apr 3, 2011)

Before we bought our place in Tennessee, we were looking in several states within an 8 hour drive of Charleston. We were looking for mostly foreclosures and found the pictures both online and what Realtors emailed us to be fairly representative of the properties we saw. We were looking at something for a cash purchase under 100K so that may have been the difference.


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## Evons hubby (Oct 3, 2005)

When I was selling real estate for a living the office crew I worked with put together videos of the properties we had listed. We always did our best to show the properties as they actually existed. Our line of reasoning for this was that NOBODY was going to buy any property that they had not walked over, and inspected for themselves prior to purchase. (at least not from our office) We took extra pains to make sure that our ads, photos, videos were as representative of the property as possible. Right down to making sure the litter along the roads were in the pictures! In my eleven years of real estate sales I dont recall ever having a single buyer complain about hidden defects. I made a lot of new friends during that 11 years, most of whom are now my neighbors.


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## AngieM2 (May 10, 2002)

I was helping Mom and Dad find a place back here. They'd get a listing and I'd go out, with out an agent first and if decent - then with the agent we used.

I would take up to 130 photos of a place if they showed interest. All the photos without the real estate pixie dust. It's all in how the photo is taken. Very enlightening, as you stated.

Good luck on the quest.


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## KentuckyDreamer (Jan 20, 2012)

Thank you so much for sharing....I am not looking forward to the searching process, but reading your post lets me know I need to start before I get in a rush to move.

I would like to say that I have spoken with two different realtors from unitedcountry.com and they were the bomb. I asked about a particular property and they wanted to tell me the cons before I drove six hours to see the house. They even told me about a concern with neighboring property. 

Terri


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## tarbe (Apr 7, 2007)

My experience has been that houses look better in pictures and raw land looks better in person.

Sounds like your experience is consistent with mine!


Tim


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## DenMacII (Aug 16, 2008)

Several of the properties I put on my shortlist that I found on the internet were disasters in person. You would think that only John Muir could capture that property just that way - in that one moment, and it would never be again.

The home we put into escrow had decent photos, but everything at the property jumped out at me as better than the listing showed. You may have to keep at it, and use your experience to whittle down the options. If you can find an address, use Google Maps - you can zoom in pretty close and get a good feel for the property and neighborhood.

Best of luck to you!


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## ChristieAcres (Apr 11, 2009)

Trailsend said:


> When we made the decision to sell our property in Missouri to relocate closer to family in New England, we knew it would not happen overnight. We were prepared to do the research we needed to do in order to find our next home. The interest in our property was immediate so off we went on our quest!
> 
> While we have not sold our place yet, we have driven approx 7000 miles over 2 years to see homes in person that we had seen online. What an eye opening experience! Very rarely do pictures depict the reality. Out of hundreds of properties we have driven to, we have seen 3 that we even kept on our short list. What a disappointment! The crazy part is that we do not even care which state we live in, NY, NH, VT, MA or ME. We thought we would find so many properties that we'd have trouble choosing! All I can say is thank goodness we haven't sold ours yet!
> 
> ...


Sorry to hear of your experience, how frustrating! Like Yvonne's hubby did, I strive to take pictures that accurately reflect the homes/properties I list. To do otherwise, leads to misrepresentation and disappointment of potential Buyers. It is a disservice to both the Seller and Buyer to misrepresent...

Two months ago, I was weeding in my garden. My cell rang; the caller was a Buyer from NC, who wanted to make an offer on a property in my area. I agreed to write up the offer, after confirming they had actually seen it on google earth, knew of the area it was in, and a contingency was that I would walk the property and photograph it (insuring they had as much info as possible). Turns out, the Listing Agent hadn't walked the property. Her pictures were poor and there were none of the beautiful 2nd growth forest the property included. Since I have been homesteading here, they were also relying on me to do a preliminary evaluation for them (suitable for the livestock they wanted, a garden, and an orchard). They really like the home, but I didn't (I am not buying it, so my opinion wasn't given). The property is fantastic. They got into town, went straight to the property, then phoned me to show them the interior of the home. I did and they were both happy. Each remarked my pics showed the home and property accurately. I was thanked for doing this.

While viewing the home, the DH brought up the possibility of renting it (before I could, as I have negotiated that with other Short Sales). I negotiated that to get them good rental terms. They moved in the next day.

Now, imagine how unhappy they would have been and how badly this would have blown up in my face...if I had misrepresented the property in any way.

Unfortunately, I have indeed seen a fair number of listings not accurately reflecting the homes/properties. Due to this, I recommend every Client (local ones) to go to google earth, also drive through the neighborhood. I preview homes for all out of State Clients, so my camera always goes with me...

Any good Agent should be willing to preview homes local to them, especially.


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## GunMonkeyIntl (May 13, 2013)

We did not have an agent, so we used the listing agent when we bought our place. We appreciated how honestly he dealt with us, especially considering that he represented the seller as well, that we chose him to list our old house. He had it sold before we even had to make both mortgage payments in the same month.

Thinking back on the buying experience, in light of this thread, I think his online images undersold the house, and didn't represent the land at all. That ended up setting the wife and I up for pleasant surprises throughout our walk-through.

We knew what we wanted in a house, and the listed specs alone told us that the house exceeded those criteria. The land was over twice the minimum 20ac that we were looking for, but that was all that the listing told us about it. We got to the property 30 minutes before the realtor so I would have a chance to walk around the land a little. The woods were much older growth than similar properties that we had looked at advertising "majestic woodland" and such. And there was a spring -fed creek that wasn't mentioned anywhere on the listing. Inside the house; there were custom details, and code-exceeding construction that did not show up on the pictures. Heck, we even ended up with an extra barn that we didn't find out was ours until after the sale (county GIS overhead images are off-set a little).

I think part of the problem is that _most_ realtors are not schooled up on what makes a good homestead. They can market the poop out of a McMansion on a cul de sac, but put an otherwise average house on a big chunk of land, and they are marketing by braille. 

If our realtor had tried to sell it as something it was not, we would have caught it during one of our several walk-throughs, but he did not try to do that. That earned him enough of my respect to let him list my other house.

Bottom-line is, some of the properties you're looking at look great online but turn out to be dogs in person. BUT, don't be afraid to go look at some of the properties that don't look that exceptional online. There's a good chance that the realtor doesn't realize what they have to sell. 

Keep your criteria simple and clear - ours was 20+ ac, 1300+ sq ft, walk-out basement, at least one large out-building w/ concrete floor. Then, when you drive out east, look at EVERY property that meets those specs. you might be surprised at what you find.


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## unregistered168043 (Sep 9, 2011)

I found my place online, after driving out to maybe a dozen places. I had a certain criteria; acreage, soil survey, general area, low property tax, zoning, wood/field mix proportion, etc.. Of course I looked at them all through google earth.

I didn't really ever look too much at the pictures. I found a bunch that met my criteria and made arrangements to see them. I chose this one out of about 12 or so. Looking back at the pictures, to be honest the pictures didn't even do the place justice.


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## Trailsend (Apr 20, 2012)

I think our biggest disappointments on this trip were the proximity of the actual house to the roads and the dumpy shacks/trailers we had to continually drive by to get to the beautiful homes! We did see some exceptional homes with all of the outbuildings and open land we were looking for but our dogs, cats, horses, chickens and cows safety and comfort is one of our main priorities.....we can't live in house that the front door opens onto a road. Yes, we have used google earth, but until you drive up to property, you really can't tell. I guess we are so used to the privacy and seclusion that we have in Missouri, we are just spoiled.


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## ChristieAcres (Apr 11, 2009)

It is very challenging to find properties without familiarity with the area. If a determination can be made to look in a few areas, I'd expect there are helpful folks here who could save you time and trouble. Their familiarity is often shared.


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## Conhntr (Aug 7, 2010)

I bought this past year and learned alot! I noticed the same thing with online listings and had several that seemed absolutely perfect but ended up being wrecks!
I entered into the process of the opinion that realtors where overpriced and a ripoff!
After wasting every weekend for a month i had enough. I found a buyers agent who visited a house with me and i pointed out what i liked and didnt. He then went and previewed 10 the following week and showed me the best 3, i again told him what i did and didnt like, he previewed another dozen the next week and showed me the best etc etc. it took 1.5 years to find what i wanted, id say my buyers agent previewed over 60 properties and showed me a dozen.
Let them do the legwork espeicially if you are out of the area. Pick 1-2 buyers agent in each state and have them preview stuff for you. Let them know if they waste your time showing you bad properties you will get in the car and drop them as an agent! Some will want you to sign an exclusive agency agreement (if you buy a house even if they arent involved they get 3%) if you are comfortable with them do so but with an andendum stating it is only effective within xxx miles of their office. 

Btw the funny part is the property i finally found was one i hapened to drive by visiting a friend. It had a "coming soon" sign and i made an offer before it was even listed. Well worth the wait!


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## Tango (Aug 19, 2002)

When I purchased my last homestead in 2005, I purchased it on line without ever having set foot there. After having decided on an area, I went to visit, looked at some properties, did homework on the area and found a real estate agent that I could work with. I spoke with him about what I wanted.A few months later he found a parcel and emailed to let me know. I bought it thorough photographs, sight unseen - 5o acres. It was an excellent place, excellent transaction too. Hoping for a similar experience this time around but this is with land only. I might do it with a house as well if I had an agent that I trusted. There are trustworthy agents out there and a lot of resources online (tax records, satellite photos, police records and forums like this one to name a few) . Best wishes on you search. For all of you!


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## dndweeks (Jan 17, 2013)

During our recent trip to look at homes, I discovered that some of the homes I thought I was going to love I didn't like at all. Other homes I didn't even want to look at based on the listing and a couple I actually ended up really liking. It was a great learning experience so as I look at listings now I find myself looking for the basics of what we want - enough bedrooms? enough bathrooms? location? acreage? etc. - If the home meets our basic criteria, then I'm interested in looking at it because I can't trust that the listing is going to be an adequate depiction of the home or property. As the buyer, I am the judge of the best or worst qualities of a home or piece of property. It's personal preference and when it comes to real estate, seeing is believing.


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