Shopping on the Internet. Homebuyers-realestate.com.

People shop for all kinds of items online: books, music, clothes, electronics, jewelry, furniture - and yes, even houses. You can't put a house in a virtual shopping cart and buy it with a single mouse click, but you can search the Web to find houses for sale. Looking at homes online is a great way to acquaint yourself with what's on the market, get a sense of prices, familiarize yourself with real-estate ads, and even take a peek inside available homes. Online research is particularly useful if you're relocating to an area far from your current home, because you can glean a lot of information and narrow your choices using online listings before you travel to tour homes in person. But even if you're searching locally, online real estate sites keep you abreast of the market and let you look at listings on your own time.

A survey conducted by the National Association of Realtors showed that, in 2008, one-third of all homebuyers began their search online. And 87 percent of them used the Internet to shop for a home at some point in the process.

Realtor.com

A good website to start your online search is Realtor.com, sponsored by the National Association of Realtors. This site has access to information from more than 800 MLSes across the United States and Canada. You can search all the listings for an area by typing in a city and state or province and then clicking the Search button, or you can get specific and tell Realtor.com to look for homes that match your price range and wish list criteria: number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, type of housing (single family, multi-family, condo, and so on), minimum size, and preferred features (fireplace, central air, laundry room, and so on).

After you tell Realtor.com what to search for, you get a list of available properties. You can sort this list by price or by number of photos per listing (to get a good sense of the way the place looks), or you can see the results on a map, letting you concentrate on listings in a particular neighborhood.

The listings vary in detail according to how much information the listing agent included, but most have at least one photo of the house (featured listings may have as many as 25), a rundown of its features and specifications, a way to contact the listing agent, and links to more of the agent's listings.

If you register (registration is optional and free), you can save your searches and individual listings to go back to them later - although the site automatically keeps track of your last five searches and the last five properties you view, even if you don't register. Registration also lets you opt in to receive email alerts when there's a change to one of your saved searches, or when new listings come on the market in the area you're searching.

Trulia

Trulia is a real estate search site brimming with useful data - and it's free. You search it just as described above: Enter information about the area you want to live in and (if you want) your price range and preferred features. Trulia's unique feature is the way it lets you sort the results. You get a plethora of options:

Newest. Seeing new listings as soon as they come on the market can give you an edge over other buyers.
Number of photos. Before you make an appointment to look at a house, you can check out the inside and the surroundings. Lots of pictures give you a clearer sense of whether this would be a good property to tour.
Price. You can sort listings from lowest price to highest, or the other way around.
Price reduced date. When a seller reduces a home's list price, it's a good indication that he's getting impatient to sell. You may be able to reach an agreement quickly or, if the price was reduced several weeks or months ago, find a seller who's open to counter offers.
Price reduced $ (high to low). This sorts reduced-price listings by dollar value - from those that have had the greatest drop in dollar value to those that have dropped the least.
Price reduced % (high to low). You can also sort reduced-price listings by how much the price has dropped as a percentage of the original list price, from greatest percentage to least. For example, if the prices of two houses have both dropped by $10,000 but the first was originally priced at $600,000 and the second at $200,000, the second home's price has dropped more in terms of percentage: 5 percent vs. 1.5 percent for the more expensive home.
More sort options. You can sort listings by just about any criterion that's important to you: Number of bedrooms or bathrooms, square footage, address, popularity of listing (how often other people have viewed it), and property type (single family, condo, land, and so on).

When you see a listing that looks interesting, click its address to get more information. The listing page has several tabs:

Home Facts. This tab gives you the listing's basics: price, size, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, lot size, how long the listing has been on Trulia, and so on. Trulia calculates the price per square foot, which is useful when you want to compare how much living space different homes (and homes in different neighborhoods) offer for the price. Clicking the View More Details button takes you to the listing's page on the real estate agency's website.
Photos. You can look at photos on the Home Facts tab, but the images are bigger and easier to scrutinize on this tab. Handily, this tab includes a number that tells you how many photos you can view. This tab may display both exterior and interior photos, depending on what the listing agent uploaded.
Maps & Nearby. View the home in the context of its neighborhood by clicking this tab. You can see the home's location on a zoomable map and the locations of nearby schools, gas stations, grocery stores, restaurants, and banks. For many locations, you can see street-level photos of the neighborhood - especially helpful if you're searching at a distance and can't easily hop into the car and drive past.
Comparables. Select this tab to see a map pinpointing other, nearby homes for sale in your price range. Hover your mouse pointer over any house location to open a box showing the comparable property and its price. Click "View more details" to open that property's listing page.
Sales Trends. Trulia's strength is in giving you fast, useful information about local housing trends. Click this tab for an at-a-glance view of how a home compares to other listings in the area: its price in relation to those of similar homes and to those of all homes for sale in the town or neighborhood you're looking at. This tab also shows a graph charting the area's average listing price from week to week, so you can see whether prices are heading up or down.
Mortgage. This tab includes a mortgage calculator so you can figure out a home's affordability. It also displays the current mortgage rates from a selection of banks. Keep in mind, though, that the mortgage payment calculator includes only principal and interest - taxes and insurance will be extra.
Schools. This tab displays a map showing a house's location and its nearby schools. You can zoom in or out on the map. Click a school to see the school's address, phone number, and how many students and teachers it has. Click the name of the school to open Trulia's profile page for that school.

Yahoo Real Estate

One of the most popular real estate sites, Yahoo Real Estate lists more than 4 million homes across the country. You can search for a home according to your preferences or restrict your search to just newly built homes or just foreclosures. Sort the results by price, size, number of bedrooms, or number of bathrooms.

Yahoo Real Estate gives a market snapshot of the city or town where you're househunting, including number of homes on the market, median price, and whether price trends are headed up or down. There's also information about mortgage rates in the area.

Zillow.com

Zillow is helpful when you're looking at home values in a particular neighborhood, but it's also a great place to searchfor a home. Like other real estate sites, you can enter your search criteria and sort the results by price, size, and number of bedrooms or bathrooms. Zillow listings include some unique features:

Zestimate. Zillow expresses its estimate of what a particular home is worth as both a specific price and a "value range," a high and low estimated market value. The smaller the value range, the more accurate the estimate.
Walk Score. By looking at how close a home is to nearby amenities, Zillow assigns a score that indicates how easy it is to live a car-free lifestyle; the higher the Walk Score, the more walkable the home's neighborhood. The Walk Score has these categories and score ranges:
Car-Dependent, Driving Only (0 - 24). You need a car to get from the home to just about anywhere else.
Car-Dependent (25 - 49). There may be an amenity or two within walking range, but you need a car to get from this home to most destinations.
Somewhat Walkable (50 - 69). You can walk to some stores and other amenities, but many errands require a car.
Very Walkable (70 - 89). You can leave the car in the garage for most of your errands.
Walkers' Paradise (90 - 100). Car? Who needs a car?

Agency websites

The big, national real estate agencies have websites you can use to launch your search for a house. Start with any of these:

Each site lets you search by location, but the results show only homes listed with that agency's local office. You can also use these sites to find a buyer's agent and read articles about real estate.

Online classifieds

In ancient times (that is, before the Internet), people used to search for a home by getting the local paper and scouring the Real Estate section of the classified ads. You can still do that, of course, but it's a lot easier and faster to search the classifieds online. You'll get better results, too, because more and more classified advertising has moved off the page and onto the Web. Most newspaper websites have a Classifieds link or a Real Estate link (or both) that takes you to a page where you can view and sort current listings.

The best-known online classified ad side is craigslist. Listing agents and "For Sale By Owner" sellers both use craigslist to advertise their properties. From the main craigslist page, select the region (state, city, province, or country) you're interested in. Then, under "housing" in the middle column, click "real estate for sale." Listings appear throughout the day; click any listing for more information and to contact the poster.

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