Free Property Listing Websites – My 3 Favorites

I fully admit to being a real estate geek, and to spending way too much time viewing free property listings online. If you’re like me, and you like to see how far your real estate dollar goes in certain areas, then read on!

Over the last few years, the competition among free property listing websites has really picked up. Once upon a time, there was only one major site that offered real estate listings to consumers — Realtor.com. That website is still around, of course, but you can also find plenty of other sites offering free property information for home buyers. Here are some of my favorite.

Top 3 Websites With Free Real Estate Listings

Let me start by saying there are hundreds of websites online that offer real estate listings in some way, shape or form. But I’m going to focus on the ones that specialize in — those that put a lot of effort into their property search features. My top five would go like this…

1. Realtor.com — It’s one of the oldest services for searching free real estate listings, and it’s still one of the best. I’ve included them in my top spot for two primary reasons: (1) quantity of data and (2) search engine sophistication. They overhauled their site fairly recently, and it now offers even more tools for house hunters.

Just know that if you enter any personal information when searching (such as your name and phone number) it will be sold to local real estate agents. And your phone will start ringing.

View their listings at www.realtor.com

2. Trulia — This property listing website has come a long way in a short time. On their “About Us” page, Trulia makes it clear that they will not sell your personal information to real estate professionals (which is what Realtor.com does). They disclose their advertising revenue model in the hopes that it will make people more comfortable using the site.

One of the things I like about their property listings is that they show recent changes to certain, such as price reductions. This gives you an extra bit of insight that can prove useful when making an offer.

View their listings at www.trulia.com

3. Zillow — I’ve put this in my top three because I expect great things from them. But their property search still has a ways to go, in my opinion. They lag behind some of the other real estate listing websites because that was not their initial focus. Zillow started out as primarily a property value estimator. And while they still offer that core focus, they’ve moved into the free property listings arena as well.

A bit of trivia for Internet nerds. Zillow was created by two of the guys who developed Expedia.com, the travel website. They’ve taken what they learned about online search from one industry and applied it to another industry.

View their listings at www.zillow.com

Honorable Mentions

I recommend using the three sites above for your online property search. But there are some other good ones online. Here are some more property listing websites worth checking out.

• Yahoo Real Estate — Yahoo offers a wealth of information for home buyers, in addition to the free real estate listings on the site. It’s more like a learning center than just a search engine.
• Homes.com — Good data. Easy to use. I wish there were more (and larger) pictures for each listing. This is one of the areas where it lags behind my top three listed above.
• HomeFinder.com — Not nearly as useful as my top-three picks above, but still worth a look.

Like I said earlier, there are literally hundreds of websites online today that claim to offer free property listings for home buyers. But if you want easy access to the best data (and the most homes), stick with the sites listed above. Use all three of these sites when searching for a home, and you’ll be in great shape!

What Property Listing Sites Do You Like?

Have a missed a shiny example of real estate search technology? Let me know. If there’s a property listing website out there that you love, but it’s not listed above, leave a comment in the box provided below.