For those who have bought a house recently...

[bw52]

Did your real estate agent have access to listings before you found them online? I always thought have a real estate agent would help us find houses we didn't know about--or at least see them early. But instead, we find the houses online and he just sets up the appt. Is this how it works? Or do we just not have a very pro-active realtor?

He does have a auto-search that sends us an email when a house matches our criteria, but that usually comes after we've already seen it elsewhere.

We like our realtor, but just don't know how much more he could be doing.

[new_mom_mry]

The nice thing about ours is that once she finally understood what we were looking for (after observing our reactions to roughly a dozen of houses that she showed us), she would go and check out new listings on the first day they were available for showings that fit our search criteria and then tell us afterwards whether it's worthwhile to see them or not...since both of us work full-time, this was pretty useful. I think a good real estate agent who is working with buyers would do that anyway...all part of forming a better awareness of what's out there and then you can report to your clients if a certain house is a good fit for them.

As for your question whether your agent can add any extra value, another thing that I found useful about our agent is that she could tell us about the history of a certain home that would reappear on the market (e.g., after falling out of escrow). For example, we would receive a new listing of a house that fell out of escrow for some reason, and then she would tell us "yeah, I saw it a while back...not worth your time..."

[TwinFoxes]

That's the reason we used Redfin for our last purchase. I found houses I liked online and they took us to view them. Their commission is much less. When we bought our other house we had the experience you did. I even asked the agent about these mythical houses they knew about before they came on the market. He basically said that never happens, maybe if an agent in their office was representing a seller who had some fixing up to do, but really it wasn't common. I loved Redfin, but there's not a lot of hand holding, and they're not in all markets.

[arivecchi]

We are looking to purchase now and we are not using a realtor. We prefer not to use a realtor so we save on that commission and redfin has all the information you would need anyway. Just set up a search on redfin and you get alerted to new listings immediately.

Redfin is awesome!

[cono0507]

We had access at the same time she did it seemed.
The house we ended up buying I found on the internet one Saturday morning (I had been stalking the listings in this particular neighborhood daily). We went to go see it a few hours later and were the first ones to see it. We put our offer in that day. It was the first day it was on the market.
If we'd waited for her to call us about it we could have missed it, so I always did my own daily search too.
Good luck!

[khm]

The listings are so instantaneous now, the only ones they'll have access to before you do are the one not yet really listed. It is possible they'll hear about something from a colleague, but it'd have to be pretty lucky, ya know.

In our market, the realtor fills out a bunch of forms and sends them to their office. The are input and boom are on the MLS and available to you. The searches they have set up may be set up to email you and the realtor instantly, or just once a day/week/whatever.

That said, we did luck out and have our realtor find us a house before it was officially on the market. He just was making some calls to some people who he knew were historically big in the specific neighborhood we wanted. He struck gold and found a house that was set to go on the market the coming weekend (they were still doing some staging, etc.) We saw it and put an offer on it immediately.

But, other than proactive calling like that or just dumb luck overhearing something by the water cooler, they do not have super-spy access anymore like the old days!

[mackmama]

For the most part, I think what you are describing is the new normal in real estate. Since everything is now on the web, buyers and realtors often have access to the same info at the same time. When we bought our current house, I definitely thought to myself more than once "why do we need a realtor?" We are looking to move again, and the neighborhood where we are looking sells a lot of homes through pocket listings. A pocket listing is a house that is sold without going on the MLS. It's basically word of mouth between realtors, so we're finding a realtor is definitely very helpful this time around. I think it mainly depends on where you are looking... whether homes are normally sold via the MLS or off-market. I'd ask your realtor if s/he knows of any pocket listings and whether such listings occur frequently where you are looking.

[acmom]

As for your question whether your agent can add any extra value, another thing that I found useful about our agent is that she could tell us about the history of a certain home that would reappear on the market (e.g., after falling out of escrow). For example, we would receive a new listing of a house that fell out of escrow for some reason, and then she would tell us "yeah, I saw it a while back...not worth your time..."

:yeahthat: We were coming from out of town to look so our agent was a big help with arranging timing so we could see everything we wanted and as PP said she honed in on what we wanted and saved us time but eliminating things she had seen that she knew we wouldn't like based on other houses we saw together.

I also found our agent really helpful during closing as we ran into a lot of issues with the seller dragging their feet and not completely the things they were supposed to remedy per the inspection and contract. She was right on top of these things and made sure it all got taken care of, which was a huge help since we were out of town!

[WatchingThemGrow]

Maybe your auto search emails are set to deliver once a day, not as properties come on the market. I'm getting several emails every day as properties are listed. You should ask to be put on instant emails not the daily digest.

[janine]

I thought agents have access to their own site (for real estate professionals) that pooled all listings and also has pertinent details not available to general public (owner details,etc).

[bw52]

Thanks for all the help. I guess I didn't realize they don't have access to much more than us.

But what about foreclosures? Anyone with experience with this? Would foreclosures be coming up in his search? We haven't seen any and it really seems like there should at least be some. We've mentioned that we're interested in these, but we don't ever see any. Maybe there just aren't any? Or would we have to search differently to find these?

Also, for those who used Redfin, how well does that work once your ready to put an offer in and need help closing (and getting the best deal). How helpful are they then? I'm wondering if they would be as good as our REA for this--that's prob when it matters the most.

Last question: Did anyone search for homes by owner? If so, where did you find out about them (if you don't know anyone in the neighborhoods you want)?

[arivecchi]

You can include foreclosures and some for sale by owner listings in your redfin search. I have not seen any foreclosures in the market I am looking at that are not wrecks. Lots of short sales though (which are more complicated to do as you have three parties negotiating and they can take a lot longer). I am not using a redfin agent, but I would definitely go that route over a traditional realtor. The key part IMO is having a good real estate attorney to negotiate the deal and protect your interests.

[DebbieJ]

We did a lot of online searching. There is so much available at your fingertips these days.

The only houses he showed us that we didn't find were ones that did not hit the MLS yet. Every office around here has a "caravan" once a week where the agents show their listings to their office before they go live.

We did appreciate his expertise in other areas, though, and wouldn't dream of buying a house without a realtor.

[arivecchi]

By the way, redfin also includes sold listings, so you can do your own CMA.

[TwinFoxes]

Our RF agent gave us suggestions on what we should bid. There were three full price offers, and the owners picked ours. (I'm now friends with the seller's agent, so I know it's true.) We had bought a home before, so we knew the general drill. I don't know what kind of help you mean at closing. But for example, on the inspection the DW leaked, the owners claimed it was then repaired. On the final walk through it leaked again, and the owners offered us $500. I wanted more (I wasnt sure you could even get a decent DW for that!) and our agent told us to ask for $1000 which we got.

But if you're the type of person who needs lots of "just checking in" type phone calls, don't do RF. My relationship with our agent was almost all email. The people who take you to see the properties are not the same as the "agent". And we had several who showed us properties. I think not having a one on one relationship would definitely bug some people, I couldn't care less.

ETA: Redfin agents are real estate agents, they just use a different business model.

[theriviera]

Well, we would not be in escrow on our house if it weren't for our RE agent as it never hit the MLS. That happens a lot around here. We will see houses pop up on Redfin as sold even though they never showed up as an active listing (we check it all.the.time.) The sellers agent called our agent as he is pretty well known in the community.

So, I guess it depends on what your market is like. in our case, this is the 2nd house that we've bought that we were able to get before it ever hit the market. Both times inventory has been really tight and things are going very quickly.

[kara97210]

We bought a new house last year - it seemed like we had access to information at the same time as our agent, but he knew some inside scoop about certain houses early. The house we ended up buying had 4 offers the first weekend on the market and our agent knew that and directed us to see it quickly, make an offer if we were interested, etc. We also looked at the house and several comps in the same morning, which helped us make our decision really quickly. We had been looking at houses for more than 6 months and had lost out on some that we were interested in because we didn't move quickly enough.

As the buyer we didn't pay any commission, so I didn't see any downside to using an agent. When we sold 2 years ago on the other hand there was a big upside to not using an agent.

[lhafer]

Redfin is not available everywhere. I have never heard of it before reading about it here.

It only covers 10 states and Washington D.C. In Texas (my state) it only covers the Dallas area and some of Austin - and not Houston (which is the 4th largest city in the nation...think it would be a good market for it!).

[WatchingThemGrow]

But what about foreclosures? Or would we have to search differently to find these?

Last question: Did anyone search for homes by owner? If so, where did you find out about them (if you don't know anyone in the neighborhoods you want)?
Foreclosures: One of our local firms has a foreclosure option and a short sale option on their search engine. Is there a local company that's larger and has a great search engine? Maybe check ziprealty.com as I see they have short sale marked on the houses that are in that process.

Have you checked Craigslist in the area you are targeting? Done any drive-by investigating? I left a note for a homeowner yesterday that we'd love to see the house before she lists it with the realtor. No response yet. Our friends who live near the house are hoping she calls me soon.

[khm]

Thanks for all the help. I guess I didn't realize they don't have access to much more than us.

But what about foreclosures? Anyone with experience with this? Would foreclosures be coming up in his search? We haven't seen any and it really seems like there should at least be some. We've mentioned that we're interested in these, but we don't ever see any. Maybe there just aren't any? Or would we have to search differently to find these?

Also, for those who used Redfin, how well does that work once your ready to put an offer in and need help closing (and getting the best deal). How helpful are they then? I'm wondering if they would be as good as our REA for this--that's prob when it matters the most.

Last question: Did anyone search for homes by owner? If so, where did you find out about them (if you don't know anyone in the neighborhoods you want)?

Sooooooooo much does depend on your market. Someone mentioned pocket listings upthread, in my market they are very rare, technically they exist as an option, but just don't happen hardly ever.

Do make sure your realtor set up search emails are set so that you get things instantly vs. once per day, as PP said. They might not want to be "spamming" you all day, so set it up to tell you 1x/day.

Foreclosures and short sales didn't used to be part of our MLS, but now are. Ask if they are part of yours. If they are not, I'm not sure how you'd find them, but I'm sure there's a way! Your realtor might not be "into" them, but maybe has a colleague that is?

You can tell your realtor that you'd like to know about stuff before it hits, ask him/her to ask around in the office with colleagues in other offices. Do you see a few names/offices on a lot of listings in your target area? Tell them to hit that person up for a bit of inside scoop. ;)

The realtors in our area can see a bit inside info on their listing sheets, but other than pocket listings, the houses themselves are the same and the info hits pretty much at the same time it is released to the public.

In my current area, FSBOs are kind of hit and miss to find. You can obviously find them by physically seeing a sign or CL, or through a discount broker that gets them on the MLS (but it's really a FSBO), but they aren't really listed in one good location. In my old area however, there was a GREAT FSBO market. There was a "store" for sellers to buy the signs and get advice, a website/free magazine at the grocery stores, and they did classes and they had relationships with attorneys and closing people. It was fantastic!! Up here, several years later there's still nothing to rival that for FSBOs.

Redfin isn't in my area, but it sounds great!

ETA - also branch out beyond realtor.com. Lots of agencies have better listing (more pics, better descriptions, etc.) on their own sites vs. what ends up on realtor.com. Their listings WILL pull everything the MLS/realtor.com has, but just put it in a better format. (They have to pay for "premium listings" on realtor.com and lots don't. But, the actual www.prudential.com or www.century21.com listings are more comprehensive.)

[HannaAddict]

Yes. Our first house we found and called realtor (pre-Redfin!), second home we bought before it was even listed as realtor was neighbor. That same realtor showed us about three other houses in the last year too before they were listed but we passed. This house, we followed until bank took it from builder and we didn't use a realtor. That said, I know more about most houses that hit the market and before most realtors do! A hobby I guess, but it has served us well. Love Redfin.

[HannaAddict]

I have several foreclosure searches on my Redfin account. One nice area across the sound from us is full of stunning foreclosed homes. We bought a new bank owned home but I'd stalked it on the county web site, not Redfin. -!