Getting the 411 On Houses Before Seeing Them

So you are out looking for a home to buy and you have a lot to consider when buying a house. But you'd like to keep your search to homes that better fit your criteria rather than seeing every house out there, right? What can you do to find out more about a home before going to see it that can help you keep your search more focused and time efficient for your busy schedule? Well, there are a number of things you can do, so let me tell you about some of them. 

Are you wondering about a potential house but don't know how safe the area is? Well one way to tell is by going to this site www.CrimeMapping.com   Type in the address of the house you are looking for and see what comes up on the crime map. Now, don't jump too quick at what you see. Try entering in an area that you already feel safe in, or live in and really like, and now compare what see. And remember, you may see more crimes in busy shopping areas so keep that in mind as well.

Maybe you have kids or think that having some may be in your future and you would like to find out about where they may go to school if you bought a particular house. Well this site may help you some when it comes to the local school systems GreatSchools.org  When you enter in the address of a home, it will tell you what school is closest to that home. But be reminded that this does not guarantee that your child will be able to attend that particular school. Please also check with the school by calling them or visiting the principal to ask about future enrollment of your child.

There is actually a lot you can find out about a house by going to this site Google Maps  Either you are already using this method to find out about a home or you think I'm giving simple advice by pointing out that you can see where a home is located on a map right? Well try this..go to the site and type in the address of the home and hit the search key. Okay, so now you see the pin point of where the home is located. Now go back to the search bar and erase the address and try typing in something like "restaurants" or "parks".  You can zoom in and out and the map will show you where these types of locations are in your area.  So if you are someone who likes to be near a lot of restaurants or maybe you want to know where you can take you dog to the park, this is a great way to find out. Now you can also re-enter your potential home's address back in the search bar and search it again. But this time when it points it out on the map, look to the left of the map and see if there is a photo of the property. If there is, then there should be a little orange symbol of a person in the corner of that photo. If you click on this orange person symbol, it will show you a front view of the home. Once the picture shows up on your main screen you can use your mouse pointer to move around the angle and position of where the camera is coming from. Here are a number of things you can find out about the house just from these photos:
Do you see any new additions in the listing that weren't in the google map photos? Maybe an extra wing of the house? If so, you may want to go to your local building and safety and see if that was permitted. What about a garage? Do you see one? Sometimes we forget to look for one in the listing because it's not pointed out to us in the listing that there isn't one. Or maybe there is one, but it's only accessible by an alley and in order to get to it, you have to manually open a gate in the alley to enter into it. You can sometimes see this on google map too. So the listing says the lot is 21,000 sqft in the hills? Wow, that is a lot of land here in LA. But maybe if you have searched the house on Google Maps, you can zoom in with the Satellite View and maybe see that most of that properties land is really hillside?   Have you ever gone to a listed house and not even recognized it from the street? Maybe because there is a large wall that surrounds the house? Well, the photographer of the listing may not have wanted that part of the house featured but Google Maps will show that big wall just fine. And what about the neighbors and the street the home is on? You can preview that on Google Maps as well.  And there are other things you can see from this site as well. Like maybe this home backs up to the rear of a grocery store. Or you would like your home to have some elements of Feng Shui? Well, you can see if this home's front door faces the South from Google Maps as well.

And last but not least, just try entering the potential home's address into a search engine and see if anything of interest comes up...you never know what you could find out there as well.


So before you set aside a whole day to go look at houses, try using some online resources and seeing if you can weed out the ones that already may not fit into your criteria and when you are ready to go out and start seeing some homes, call me. I am happy to help you with all your Real Estate needs (323)828-7777