Just now I finally got around to making a little progress on our upcoming “Sacramento Buyer’s Seminar”, which is scheduled to launch February 28th if I can keep making forward progress on it. The third article in the series will be about searching for a home. Although eventually I’ll beef this up to include later steps you might take such as asking you Realtor® to do a customized search for you, and a worksheet you can use on tour, what I have so far nevertheless stands on its own as a fairly decent tutorial to our basic search page.
Searching for a Home
In our first two emails we talked about how to order your free credit report and analysis, and the steps to getting preapproved for a loan. As you learned, many people skip this important step only to find themselves overextended later on, so it’s important to have the numbers in mind before you shop.
Once you have an idea of what you can afford and what your comfort level is, you’ll want to begin by shopping for a home. For many of us, online search tools are a convenient way to browse through the available inventory at our leisure, often several weeks or months before we actually want to meet with an agent. The purpose of this email is to point out some of the different search tools that are available and to inform you about your options.
Getting Started
By far the search page that our buyers (and web site logs) tell us is most popular is our simple, basic search page. This page lets you search for homes by city name or by zip code — often in Sacramento we find it’s a particular zip code that folks want to drill down into — Rosemont, for example, Land Park or Midtown.
In addition to geographic location, you can control how many bedrooms and baths, the minimum size, and of course, a price range. With this search tool, you can search for all the listings in the Sacramento Area MLS (Multiple Listing Service).
This brings us to an important point about Internet search tools. Sometimes consumers will go from site to site looking to
see what agents have what listings. This is not so much a mistake as it is a waste of time, because the MLS is not a company or agent specific database, it’s a database that the vast majority of Realtors® use to list all the homes they sell. If you see a site like ours that seems to have hundreds and hundreds of listings available, chances are you’re looking at MLS data, so you have access to practically all the homes in inventory (with the exception of for-sale-by-owner listings and a few other special cases).
Our Internet search tools are fed by MLS data, and are updated six times per week so they’re very current. In fact, they are updated more often than the national real estate web site, Realtor.com.
To see a simple search in action, try entering a city name and then clicking “search” with the default price range. You’ll get a page with ten listings displayed and links to many more, that may look something like this:
This thumbnail view tells you the price, address, and other details. Note that it shows the listing office for each listing. Because you are looking at MLS data, not just our own listings, we’re showing you all the homes you can look at when you tour with us — whether we are the listing agent or not. (We’ll have more to say about that when we talk about agency in a later e-mail). As you can see on the right, each listing is provided by MetroList, the name of the company that maintains our Sacramento area regional Multiple Listing Service.
Drilling Down to More Details
At this point you have several choices. If you’ve signed up for a Property Organizer account, you can save the listings that interest you so you can return to them later. Alternately, you can click on the Photo Tour link to see all the photos we have available for this home, or you can click on the address or the house to get to a summary page containing more information about the house.
If you click to get to the summary page, you’ll see the main photo again along with several buttons on the top. It will look
something like this (shown here condensed somewhat):

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If you scroll down, you’ll also see a group of links below the price. Between the top buttons and the links on the bottom, some of the selections you can make are:
- Request More Information
This link lets you send an email to a Realtor® to get more information about the home. You should fill out the comments section carefully with any details you’re especially interested in, and please leave a number where we can reach you in case you want to ask us specific questions.
- More Details
This link takes you to a page that has very complete listing information. Most of what a Realtor® would have available is displayed here (with the exception of days on market, the showing instructions, and a few other fields).
- Schedule a Showing
Ready to see more? This link lets you request a showing with a Realtor® This link is appropriate if you’re not already working with an agent and want us to show you the home and (if you wish) perhaps work with you on other homes. If you
already have an agent, you should not use this link, but call your agent for a showing.
- Save This Property
Saves the Property to your Property Organizer Account so you can look at it later.
- Map Location
Well, you know what they say, “Location, Location, Location”.
- Mortgage Information
A basic mortgage calculator. Fair warning: this does not include tax and insurance. For a better estimate, talk to your lender or Realtor®
- School Information
This link takes you instantly to information about the schools in the area of the home you’re looking at. (Another resource you definitely be familiar with if schools are a concern to you is GreatSchools.net. Greatschools is probably better for general research, but the beauty of our property schools link is that you can check out what may be available right near the home you’re looking at. Please note, however, that later on when you decide to make an offer, you should double check this information with the school district office.