10 Best Real Estate Web Sites for Valley Buyers

If you’re actively looking to buy property in the San Fernando Valley, or just monitoring the market to take its pulse, here are the top ten web resources I’d recommend to keep in your browser Favorites.  In no particular order:

Catalist Homes – Catalist’s ForeclosureSearch is one of the few sites I’ve found that actually presents detailed searchable foreclosure listings rather than just being a teaser ad for RealtyTrac’s subscription foreclosure info service.  Access requires free registration, but once logged in you can filter foreclosures by available, contingent and pending, and view recent sales.

May 5th and Everything After – Sharp, smart and snarky blog.  If we had a real estate hawk watching every Valley neighborhood like Kate watches Sherman Oaks, we’d be home free.  As it is, her focused ferocity spills over to enlighten us on the rest of the Valley and L.A. in general.

PropertyShark – Probably the most comprehensive data report on any individual property, up to and including scanned images of the County Recorder’s office documents; it’s a little weird to stumble on your own signature on a Grant Deed online.  Up to six property searches a day with free registration; beyond that you’re in paid subscription territory.

Google Maps – Now that the entire L.A. area, including all of the Valley, has been photographed for Google’s Street View feature, why not start exploring neighborhoods online to learn you’d never want to live there, rather than waste gallons of $4 gas?  Punch in an address, see a 360 degree view from the street in front of it.  Awesome.

Southland Regional Association of Realtors (SRAR) – Click on the Statistics link to see the raw SFR and condo numbers only for the San Fernando and Santa Clarita Valleys.  Then click Charts to see them in digestible form:  inventory, new listings, escrows opened and closed, sales broken down by price, etc.  Ignore the Realtor happy talk.

L.A. Land – The Los Angeles Times real estate blog hosted by Peter Viles is indispensable both for Viles’ own observations and for the acuity of his readers’ abundant comments.  The broad coverage of L.A. scales down well for the Valley-centric, and is searchable as well.

Craigslist – CL’s eccentricity carries over to its real estate listings, which are tabbed by area – the SFV has its own tab for easy reference.  FSBO’s, REO’s, short sales:  all work as search terms.  Sellers who hate the MLS and paying commissions gravitate to CL.

DataQuick – The same So Cal resale home activity tables pubished monthly by the L.A. Times are found here.  Find out by zip code if prices are holding up or, more likely, slumping.

BankOwned.LA – Sure, it’s a commercial realtors’ site, but it does pipeline the REO properties efficiently by Valley neighborhood.  Be sure to turn off the sound to avoid the repetitive, obnoxious audio blurb.  Property details like “days on market” and previous sales will need to be scrounged up elsewhere, though.  Places like…

Redfin -  No other site I know does target market mapping by zip code or neighborhood as well.  They update current MLS info as quickly as anyone.  And they provide a wealth of relevant property information, from price updates to sales histories to comp sales.  Did I mention you can save a bundle by buying through Redfin?  They’ll refund two-thirds of the buyer’s agent commission to you – who else does that?