HomeFinder.com CEO August Appraisal: Learning the ABCs of Real Estate

IDX? MLS? RETS? VOW? What in the world of alphabet soup is going on here?

To say my first few months in the real estate industry drowned me in a sea of confusing jargon is an understatement. I transferred to HomeFinder.com from a travel website, Orbitz.com, and vividly remember thinking, "How hard can real estate data be?" Little did I know, the real estate industry holds more confusing rules and terms than a congressional spending bill.

I am a self-confessed geek and still actively write code now and then, so you would think I did some online home schooling to answer my real estate questions. However, I quickly learned the best tutoring I could find walked the halls of HomeFinder.com every day. We employ a number of real estate agents and a host of industry veterans, and I soon quizzed them on a daily basis with questions like, What's an IDX feed? How do agents and brokers work together? How come Roost and RedFin get to have all of the listings on their sites?

To really understand the ins and outs of the real estate industry, there's no better resource than a great agent or broker. Even with the plethora of information available online, my wife and I still tapped a local agent when buying our home, since she knew the area and the local neighborhoods better than any website could.

After learning this, I found discovering information on home searching much, much easier. If I could give any real estate advice, it would be to do all the research you can online using sites such as HomeFinder.com, that have tons of homes for sale and great information on neighborhoods, schools, rentals and more, and to also find an agent that you enjoy working with and knows the area. The combination of the two is a winning strategy to buying an A+ home and acing the selling and buying process.

To view the original article, visit the HomeFinder.com blog.