Searching for a home for sale in South Lake Tahoe is pretty easy. Thanks to technology, searching for real estate in South Lake Tahoe has become so indepth that it is almost impossible to miss a property. There are a variety of websites like Realtor.com, Zillow, your local South Lake Tahoe realtor’s website and MUCH more. As hard is it is to believe, real estate in South Lake Tahoe was a little harder to search for prior to technology. Your two options were either driving around and looking or a sale sign OR relying on your South Lake Tahoe realtor to comb “the book” and hope the information was current. Before the internet, the MLS would publish listings in a big book that wasn’t updated often. Thankfully, things have changed and are much easier for the 94% of buyers who use the internet to search. This of course all starts with the local Multiple Listing Service. This is really the “hub” of South Lake Tahoe real estate. Every listing we get, we enter in to this website so that local agents can see your home right away and send to their buyers. Additionally, this is the site that feeds listings to the well known websites previously mentioned.
Now that you know where listing information comes from, it is important to know what exactly you are looking for. Everyone has a specific list like a certain number of beds, baths, close proximity to places like schools, work, recreation and more. If you are buying real estate in South Lake Tahoe and don’t yet know what these things are, you should sit down and figure it out. Knowing up front what you NEED vs. what you want will save you (and your South Lake Tahoe realtor and the seller) a lot of time. Sharing this list with your Lake Tahoe realtor allows them to set you up on an automatic search as well as let you know if something that matches has popped up in the MLS. You may feel you don’t need a realtor to help you search with how easy it is to find houses, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Usually, it takes about 24 hours before a listing will “feed” into an IDX search so there can be a delay. In a competitive market, 1 day can make a huge difference so having a local Lake Tahoe realtor working on your behalf is crucial. Not to mention, your realtor can see “agent only remarks” in the local MLS. These are private details that won’t be found on sites like Zillow and Realtor.com. Once you have picked a few houses to look at, your South Lake Tahoe real estate expert will schedule a showing according to the instructions and get you into the home as soon as possible.
You can still be pro-active and drive around, look for signs, comb the local paper and check your listing alerts, but when it comes to searching for South Lake Tahoe real estate, trust your local, licensed Lake Tahoe realtor. We know the ins and outs of each neighborhood and can give you accurate information.
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