Chew On This!

Hill Mullikin recently put out of list of 10 Free Internet Productivity Tools and Dwellicious made the cut!

Check it out. Here’s the link:

10 Free Internet Productivity Tools

Maggie Etheridge-Ureno is a Realtor in Orange County California. She just launched a new blog, How Real Estate Works, and if her first post is any indication of what to come than we are all in for a treat.

Many Dwellicious users have heard about the great deals in REO properties and so-called “Short Sales”. Maggie does a great job explaining the “ins and outs” of these types of transactions. Enjoy!

How do Foreclosures and Short Sales work?

With the real estate market as soft as it is, we are getting a lot of questions from tentative buyers about short sales and foreclosures. What is it like to buy one? Are all of them are automatically the smokin’ deals they think they are? … and if not, how can we evaluate which ones really are sound investments?

Let’s take a look at how these types of sales work. Read more….

I’ve got to say one of the best things Google has ever put out is Street View. And lucky for us, its real estate related!! The ability to see a street level view of a house or some other type of property is just amazing to me.

Best of all its free! We made it super easy to use in our “Cool Tools” section. Just click on the “Cool Tools button, located on the bottom right of your bookmark.

Today I want to talk about how to use Google Street View to analyze the neighborhood of the home you have bookmarked using Dwellicious.

I’m going to start of with this property:

The Dwellicious Bookmark is here.

Here’s what the Map & Street View look like:

First off, I have to say, isn’t this a great photo of the home itself?? I think it even rivals the photo included on the website you bookmarked the property came (which is typically what the real estate agent uploaded to their MLS). The other thing I notice is that it must have been a windy day when they took the photo, (can you see the sign and how it’s waving in the wind?)

Google Street View is easy to use. All you need to do is click on the photo and move the mouse in the direction you want to see. This makes it easy to check your surrounding area.

If you want to get a front facing view of the house next door just click on the arrows that are overlaid on the street.

Another thing I like to check is what I call the “morning newspaper view”. This is the view you will have from your front door when you pick up the newspaper from your porch. Basically the view of whats directly in front of the home.

This is easy to do in Street View. You just click on the image and drag the mouse until your view does a complete 180 degree turn. If you have done this correctly here’s what you’ll see.

Hmmmm. Looks like you’ve got a “great” view of your potential neighbor’s backyard, and he appears to be a “collector”.

Perhaps a view of blue tarps is not what your looking for? Maybe you should keep your search for a home going a bit longer.

Hopefully you can how Google’s Street View is a great tool in your quest to find your next home.

Happy house hunting!!

For extra credit see what the Street View pops up for this income property recently bookmarked on Dwellicious. (Must be 18 yrs + old)

Oh My!

http://dwellicious.com/remax1/bookmarks/814