Okay call me crazy but I just bought my home online.  The first real house I’ve purchased in ten years,  I’ve never viewed it in person, I sent an agent to check it out, I don’t know the first thing about the neighborhood OTHER than what I’ve researched online and the price was a steal. The area is one I love and the agent is one I trusted.  You can buy a house online now, and not have to spend your time visiting, viewing or even inspecting. Someone else will do that for you.

We’ll see how that works out.

Frankly, now is the time to be buying real estate. It sounds horrid, taking advantage of others loss of a job, or some other issue that forces them to sell, but real estate prices are down, and dropping further, before, or at least I predict before, they begin to jump again and things get a bit less tight on the market, and the price yo’ure paying for a neat place to live now, jumps about 25 percent. To buy a house online is just like buying any other purchase online, you just need to be a little more careful.

Online real estate purchasing is a huge game right now. Its big business to check out your real estate, your taxes and your amenities as well as what’s in the neighborhood where you’re going to live or rent, and then, actually to buy your property, sometimes sight unseen, online.

Take for example the new, up and coming site, Maui Property Index.

Maui Property Index addresses a need that was seriously lacking in the Maui area prior to now. There are more than 200 condo complexes on Maui. When you want to purchase, checking them all out yourself is hard work, and would take weeks. Having all of the information consolidated in one place is what makes this site so incredible.

A visit to www.mauipropertyindex.com can offer you the description of the condo unit that you’re looking for, what kind of neighborhood its in, whether you can walk to the beach, if you’ve got access to a private pool, a spa, a clubhouse, whether those condos permit pets, and show you pictures, prices, taxes and concierge or on site manager details all with just a few clicks of your mouse.  Maui Property Index also gives you links to click to go to the property web site if one exists, or who to contact about condos for sale in that complex.

The Maui Property Index also impressed me from a geek point of view as well. The site uses some state of the art software written by the man responsible for the TRS-80 computer from decades ago, Donald French, who has built what is probably the best of the best of indexing type software for properties and is offering that software to other realty companies.

West USA Realty,www.westusa.com where I purchased my own property is another prime example of what can be found online if you have the right site, the right company and know what to search for. West Usa not only offers you a glance at whats available, gives you great inside photos of most of them, and gives you some super insight into what the area itself holds, part of the history and what kind of prices you can expect on things like utilities, groceries and other services in the area.
Except for that annoying little talking woman that the anti geeks think people will love,(sorry guys but really.. she’s the pits) West USA Realty is quite possibly the perfect realty site, affording articles that offer you a vast array of information into the buying process, what to expect and how to accomplish it.
The realtor who handled our purchase even checked out the house for us, and offered to have it cleaned before we got there. Buying a property online was never easier. Granted, like I said, it has to be the right realtor and the right site, BUT, buying a property online can be done.

Buying your computer online is one thing, but buying a house online is a bit more of an investment of money so it should also be a bigger investment in your time. Don’t, just like any other investment, larger or small, invest your time in working out a purchase until you invest it in checking out the company you want to work with.

Pay attention, and investigate your realty site fully. If its incomplete or doesn’t have the information that you want or need to make an informed purchase, find another one. Find out if the realtor has a high level of satisfaction, or has had complaints filed against them. Speak with them several times and trust your instincts when you do so. If you feel like you’re being pushed, you probably are.
When you’re shopping online, the bottom line is that you need to shop for anything with some common sense. If you’ve got that and a decent computer connection, there is no reason you need to visit the area in order to buy a house there, and you can save a lot by not going until you’re ready to move in.

Here is a tip for you about buying property online. Buy your home from an Owner will Carry property in the realtor’s stock. You have much more recourse if you get there and don’t like what you see or it was misrepresented to you.

Working with a  single entity, just one person when you buy ANY property, particularly when you buy a property online, as opposed to a real estate brokerage or a bank makes it far more easy to correct a mistake. I’ve purchased four homes in the past six years from a private party who carried the mortgage in the beginning. When I found that I’d purchased a solid house or mobile home, I coughed up the cash for it.

Just because your owner will carry mortgage is the way you buy it, doesn’t mean that’s the way it has to stay. It works fairly well as a safety net.  Trust me when I say that filing suit against a private party, or  working with a private party  to resolve the issues, as opposed to arguing with a bank when you’ve already signed loan papers  and they don’t care if yo’ure happy is so much nicer.

The internet has a way of bringing things to you, and letting you really see them first hand, so that you can find what you want, when you want, and get the deals that you want before someone else snaps them up.Now get out there and buy a house online, before someone else gets al the good deals.
Happy shopping.

Incidentally, want to see what I found when I arrived in Arizona?  The house and property are awesome.. check out the property that I bought online. The story does have a happy ending so far…  great home. but a little tip. check out the employment situation a bit more thoroughly than we did. There were jobs yes, and he got one… but it didn’t stick around long.

. Fortunately I worked from home but my husband worked nine days and was laid off along with ten other unhappy people, so its been a bit tough pulling it all together.