On top of professional photos, many rental listings include video and 3D tours. Users can filter for listings that include a digital walkthrough of some kind. The Real Estate One Family of Companies is a family-owned company based in Michigan. Every day is spent striving towards the mission of creating the best real estate experience for each of our customers. Lily Allen-Duenas https://wearehomebuyers.com/ is a writer, content storyteller, and graphic designer with over 7 years of professional experience. Her work spans sectors including real estate, travel, health, wellness, arts, and culture.
The company analyzes over 27 million real estate transactions and thousands of reviews to determine which agent is best for you based on your needs. For recommended properties, the site provides quick stats on the estimated after-rehab value, the estimated return on investment (ROI) after construction, cap rate, and gross yield. It allows users to search for foreclosure properties and auctions in addition to on-market listings with low prices or recently reduced prices. HomeLight’s Simple Sale website, for example, provides a great alternative solution for sellers who need to move quickly by facilitating cash offers on its platform.
For example, “Forums” operates somewhat like a non-anonymous Reddit, where investors can ask anything to the broader community and connect through nested comment threads. Curious whether McAllen, Texas, or Chattanooga, Tennessee is a better place to invest? There are additional tools for finding mortgage rates, calculating mortgage payments and affordability, and getting pre-qualified for a home loan. To determine the winners, we spent hours researching the options, personally tested each one, and chatted with real estate experts about their favorites for a second opinion. The best real estate websites help you find what you need, when you need it, no matter where you are in your plans to buy, rent, or sell. Using these insights, we’ll provide you with a preliminary estimate of home value in under two minutes.
Best For Investor Resources And Networking: Biggerpockets
At HomeLight, our vision is a world where every real estate transaction is simple, certain, and satisfying. Buying a home is an exciting but overwhelming process, especially for first-timers. So HomeLight created an entire hub of resources to help you navigate each step with confidence.
Best For Fast Home Selling: Simple Sale
With most of its staff and content creators being military spouses, MilitaryByOwner is well-qualified and uniquely positioned to serve its customer base. The site provides statistics comparing how affordable or expensive a community is compared to the broader city. It also features comments from real residents about the perks and drawbacks of an area, so a user can get the inside scoop firsthand. To get started, you simply answer a few questions about your timeline and priorities, and HomeLight provides you with two to three agent recommendations in just two minutes. To request a cash offer from Simple Sale, enter the address of your home and answer a few quick questions about it. HomeLight’s Home Value Estimator aggregates publicly available data, such as tax records and assessments, your home’s last sale price, and recent sales records for other properties in the same neighborhood.
The Best Real Estate Websites Offer A Wealth Of Resources
You can also use the map’s draw feature to refine your search to a specific area. In the absence of an agent, a FSBO seller can post their listing for free to Zillow and include video and unlimited photos. The post will appear on Zillow and Trulia to reach a large home buyer audience. You can also opt for a flat fee MLS listing to get your property on the local directory. Think of any online home price tool as a starting point only, as its data may be limited. What’s nice about HomeLight’s tool is that if you want to get even closer to your home’s true value, HomeLight will connect you with a top real estate agent near you as a next step.
Local real estate agents can physically view the property, list homes like yours every day, know the neighborhoods and market trends, and identify the unique characteristics of the property. You’ll be hard-pressed to find an online tool that can do all of that, so HomeLight can guide you to the next logical step if you want a professional opinion. Because Simple Sale has a network of cash buyers on its platform, partner-investors have a wide range of investment strategies, including fix-and-flip and buy-and-hold, all over the country. This enables Simple Sale to provide cash offers for a wide array of properties in different locations.
Trulia is owned by Zillow, and cannot be used to list a for-sale or rental property — you’ll have to go through Zillow to do that. That being said, it’s still a solid option for users looking to explore the neighborhoods they’re home shopping in. About 6% of recent home sales were for sale by owner (FSBO), meaning the sellers did not enlist the services of a real estate professional in the process. Some sellers choose this route to avoid paying agent commissions, though it’s been shown working with a top agent can help you maximize your sale price, helping to offset or exceed what you’d pay in commission. According to 2024 data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), 90% of sellers and 88% of buyers enlisted the services of a real estate agent in their journey. However, with there being over three million active real estate licensees in the U.S., it can be challenging to know who to hire.
Moreover, the “Plan Your Commute” feature lets you search listings that suit your ideal travel time to and from key places and amenities. If you want to make sure your commute to work is 15 minutes or less via bicycle, this tool eliminates the guesswork. With these platforms, you can find apartment listings with balconies, home search results tailored to your exact specifications, and recommendations for top-rated Realtors — all just a few clicks away. Dave, a veteran who served in the Marine Corps for 21 years, and Sharon, who worked in real estate, were the perfect duo to launch a military-focused real estate website.
