Marin Shoppers: Get Smart

Marin  County’s local news periodical – the Marin Independent Journal, has been sprucing up their website with some pretty cool tools for consumers. 

First, it started providing links to databases to look up the payroll of Marin County public employees.  Very informative, since as taxpayers, it’s great to see how our money is spent and how the employees of the county are being (or not) managed.

Lately, they released two other databases geared towards the Marin real estate market.  One allows you to look up recent Marin home sales data and the other provides information on Marin foreclosures.

The sales database provides a list of recently sold homes in the area, which one can search by city, zip or specific address.  It provides the sale price and when it was added to the database (i.e. assuming that was the sale date).  What it doesn’t tell you is what it was listed for, but hopefully you’ve been keeping a keen eye on certain properties anyways.

The foreclosure database also allows you to search foreclosed homes by the same criteria – city, zip, address, date, value, etc.  Unlike other online foreclosure sites, these lists look accurrate and you don’t have to pay anything.  Results tell you the date of the foreclosure, the lender and the value.  From there, you pretty much have to figure out how to take advantage of it.

As potential home buyers and with everything else, knowledge is power.  Educating yourself and seeking out information will arm you to be a sharper and smarter buyer.