After several years of an absolutely white hot real estate market in just about every corner of the US, it seems things are cooling down. In fact, the bubble has really burst just about everywhere as prices have actually begun to fall in many of the biggest markets around the country. Despite this fact, however, people are still buying and selling homes.

Some folks need to relocate, or find a bigger home, or, more likely, downsize a bit and get something more affordable. Whatever the case, homes are still on the market and since the tide has turned, it is now clearly a buyer’s market. Fortunately for these buyers, there are a bunch of online tools they can use to help them weave their way through this changing real estate market.

Most people still choose to use a realtor and these folks still have their place. Thee are, however, some useful websites to help you work your way through the real estate maze whether you’ve chosen to work with a realtor or want to do-it-yourself.

One of the most useful tools is just going to realtor.com and doing some searches for the homes in your area that fit your criteria. You won’t see as much information as realtors can see, but it’s a great place to start.

Another great place to explore is www.zillow.com. You can find homes in your prospective area that are for sale or have sold, but you can also get an estimate…or a “zestimate” …of the value of the home. This site also gives you information such as recent sales prices and tax rates on individual homes.

A similar site to zillow is Trulia.com. This site gives information like that found on zillow such as homes for sale, as well as information on the neighborhood and schools. Trulia also offers an interesting “Heat Map” that shows a colored map of home prices and trends.

If you want to tackle the real estate market yourself, but aren’t quite ready to do a FSBO, you can use the services of Redfin.com. Redfin will help you to either sell your home or buy a new one. If you are selling your home, rather than take the 3% that most agents take, Redfin will take a flat fee of either $3,000 or $4,000, depending on the options you choose. This can be quite a bit of savings, especially if your home is listed for a high price. For this fee, they will place your property in the multiple listing service (MLS), provide you with a lockbox and a sign for your yard, and then they will hadle all the negotiations and paperwork.

For buying a home, you do most of the legwork in finding a home while Redfin provides you with an agent who handles home tours, gives you advice on pricing and handles the negotiations and helps with the closing process. For this service Redfin takes 1% of the sales price instead of the full 3%, and you get to keep the remaining 2%. That can lead to some serious savings.

There are websites and tools popping up all of the time online to help you work your way through the maze of real estate. I suggest you take some time to use these tools to keep yourself better informed and ready for the market whether you’re using a realtor or not.

Popularity: 19% [?]