Plan Your Best House Scouting Path

House hunting has changed significantly in the last 15 years, to say the least. Today, it’s entirely possible to be a closet looky-loo. It wasn’t so long ago that the only way to investigate real estate was to ask a real estate agent for suitable listings and tours, or find them on your own and attend open houses via the Sunday paper. However, times have changed, and today, you can do most of the preliminary footwork easily, and on your own.

For example, you can do the initial search on suitable properties from your own home, using sites such as our dear friend, Redfin. (Did you notice? Rearrange the letters of ”friend” and you get ”Redfin.”) Not only do these listings include all the specifications and features on the home, but the photos help enormously. Using this data, you can eliminate some houses right off the bat, or you can narrow the list down to a few solid potential candidates within minutes.

Next, comes the drive-by. Once you have an “A list,” you’ll probably want to drive by these prospect to scope out the neighborhood, lot, street location, and facade. This is usually where I make my second cut. (I had become so good at it that I didn’t even have to slow down to strike some of the homes off my list!) In any event, by the time you’ve completed these preliminary phases, you’ll have narrowed your prospects way down, and then it’s time to tour what’s left and get serious.

However, to help you out with the drive-by phase, I ran across a nifty, little online gadget. IdealRoute.com lets you type in multiple addresses, and the using Google maps, it spits out the most efficient route for you to take, to view all the properties entered. Simple. Easy. Nothing fancy. Just the facts, ma’am (or sir). So, whether you’re interested in the Mercer Island marvels that Tera pointed out, the $/square foot Capitol Hill deals that Rick found, or the Capital Hill open houses that Allison dug up this week, this handy, dandy little utility will help you plan the best route to take.