The Internet has made many amazing things possible, not the least of which is the ability to more or less do away with the real estate agent and do your house hunting online.  Now you can even look for a house after hours or from another state — for instance, you can easily shop for townhomes in Carlsbad from your current residence in Philadelphia.

For starters, you have Realtor.com, which is a pretty thorough listing of all the homes with MLS numbers.  You can search on this site by zip code, price, number of bathrooms, number of bedrooms, and even the size of the lot the house is on.  For instance, you could search for north San Diego real estate that conforms to the size and other needs that you have, even in the middle of the night if you want!  Remember the days when we had to depend on a real estate agent to know of homes for sale with the general features we were looking for?  Those days are over now that we have Realtor.com.

Another tool that is becoming popular is YouTube.  A lot of real estate agents are starting to upload virtual tour videos onto this video site.  These videos then allow homebuyers to get a better feel for a home than they can get from the listing and pictures posted on Realtor.com.

And of course, real estate agents’ own websites are often used both for listings and for virtual tours.  Often you’ll find that the real estate agent’s website actually has more information than you can find anywhere else, so be sure to check that first.

In short, the Internet has revolutionized the real estate industry — and all in good ways!

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