Vancouver WA Real Estate Blog

Don't miss the Details on the Home Detail page

After you have entered all the search parameters that are important to you, be sure not to miss any of the  information available in the Home Detail page.
There is so much to go through it is easy to overlook some of the most important data.
Under "Essential Information" you will find most of the home stats, price, number of bedrooms, baths and year built. A couple of things to notice in this area, year built is most important if it is the current year. New homes are often listed as "To be built" which means they are not even started. So if you see artist renderings in the photos, it is likely this home is not yet built. That might not be a problem, but it can take 4-6 months or longer for construction to be completed. Good to know.
Number of levels and Master bedroom level are both things to consider, as well as the Sub-type, which might be attached or detached. Townhouses and condos are most often attached. Single family detached homes share...

Searching for Homes online, Do It Right!

It's easy to use any one of the myriad of home search tools online, isn't it? Nope.  Sure, anyone can plug in the price range and number of bedrooms and hit the "Search" button. But the results you get might not be accurate, and they might not truly reflect what you are searching for.

First, and most important get on the right website. If you are looking for homes in Vancouver WA, hopefully it's mine:). Seriously, do a search on Google, Bing or your favorite search engine for "your city homes for sale"  when you get to the results page, skip over the ads at the top and the national websites like Zillow and Trulia. Most people don't realize those large National websites do not have accurate results, they don't even have all the homes listed on their websites! That's a whole other blog post topic:). And you may want to skip over even the local results, in my market many of those are property management companies. Look for a local Realtor website.  

Once you...

Why isn't my picture on the Home Page of the website?

I get this question all the time, mostly from other Realtors. Rarely do my clients ask why, and that to me, speaks volumes. My picture isn't on my Home page because when people are beginning to search for homes on the Internet in Vancouver or anywhere they are looking for a home, not an agent.

When I first built this website back in 2004, I did a lot of research and visited many other Realtor websites to get a feeling for how I wanted my website to work. Back then most Realtor websites were basically an online business card and ego page. This never set right with me. I knew that if I was looking for information about homes for sale online I would want to, well, look at homes!

So I tried to build a website that would provide people searching for homes for sale in Vancouver WA with as much information as possible. I included an IDX feed from the Multiple listing service that displayed all the homes for sale in Vancouver. I wrote recommendations for local restaurants, grocery...

Summer's almost over :(

It's hard to believe that fall is on the way. Every year the Real Estate market slows down right before school starts. The market has been so hot these last few months it's only slightly slowing. But from now until the end of the year is the best time to buy a home. There is less competition for homes as we head into fall and winter. Don't wait until spring to start looking for a home, you will have more homes to choose from and you should see better prices.

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