Buying, selling real estate using tools

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This is a series of blogs on tools useful in real estate by buyers, sellers, real estate professionals and interested others. Google offers so many tools to help maneuver through the real estate market, and to know your community where you live or want to buy a home in. FIRST, check out Google Maps to get accurate pinpointed directions and other information. SECOND, check out Google Earth to get aerial and street views of the neighborhood, and home you are interested in. You may see a wooded area between homes you did not know existed from driving down the street in your car. THIRD, use housefront.com as a great quick source of property data via your cell phone. You text 46873, input the address (zip codes usually not necessary), and in seconds you will get a text message of approximate square footage, estimated value range, what it last sold for, who the owner is, when the home was build, and sometimes other information, like number of bedrooms. I use this tool all the time. FOURTH, go to Google search, and input street address, or owner's name, or phone number of someone you want to get information on. You may be surprised with the results. Today, everything almost is public information. We all have the right to know. That is knowledge. I search on people i meet all the time. Interesting results from that: web presence, websites, business involvements. So cool. Knowlege is wonderful. FIFTH, make maximum use of text messaging, keeping in mind that usually you have a limit of 160 characters in a text message. Feel free to text real estate professionals since this is a preferred means of communication by many. It is so convenient to be able to view the written text, and respond accordingly. Sometimes when we hear a request, comment, suggestion, we forget it, or are distracted. A text message is part of a trail of communication between people. SIXTH, take advantage of your county's property appraiser, or tax collector website to look up property data on homes or lots. Seventh, have several email accounts (free with yahoo, gmail, hotmail) Have an email account just for real estate homebuying or homeselling. Have another emial for community interests. That way, you separate personal, social emailing from your real estate interest. Kenneth Fach, Tallahassee, Florida cell/text 850-339-5753