How to use the Web in your house hunt

Sept. 22--For most home buyers and renters, the search for the perfect place begins on the Internet. The importance of online searches was highlighted recently when Seattle-based Zillow.com announced that it plans to buy its main rival, San Francisco-based Trulia.com, for $3.5 billion in Zillow stock. Zillow plans to keep both websites active.

The Zillow-Trulia deal raises the question: What are the best ways to use the Internet to scope out homes, schools, neighborhoods and towns? Here are some ideas on how to research real estate's hot topics:

Schools

The New Jersey Department of Education produces annual report cards that rank school districts and individual schools, compared with districts that have similar socioeconomic profiles _ a valuable tool, since even neighboring towns can have very different educational systems.

The report cards give a long list of details about a school _ down to the percentage of students who take advanced placement (AP) classes, the languages spoken at home, the percentage who qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches. Also: dropout rates, the percentage of students who take visual and performing arts. and the percentage who pass statewide proficiency tests.

For sale or for rent listings

The New Jersey Multiple Listing Service and the Garden State Multiple Listing Service show homes for sale in Bergen and Passaic counties. These are updated often _ more often than Zillow.com and Trulia.com, according to North Jersey real estate agents.

While there's some overlap, NJMLS has more Bergen homes and GSMLS has more in Passaic.

The NJMLS website also has a tab called "Community," which offers links to information about individual towns, including census information (with median incomes and ages) and the state school report cards.

NorthJersey.com, the website of North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record, also has for-sale and for-rent listings (click on "Real Estate"), along with information such as income and educational levels in each town.

Realtor.com, the website of the National Association of Realtors, collects information from the local multiple listing services, so it's also a way to search the local market. Realtor.com also offers advice on buying and selling, as well as real estate news _ from updates on mortgage rates to more frothy fare, such as the news that the singer Kesha recently paid $1.5 million for a place in Venice Beach, Calif.

Home values and real estate advice

Zillow and Trulia also offer sale and rental listings. Zillow.com is best known for its "Zestimates" of home values, which are based on public data, but the company acknowledges that the Zestimates can easily be off by 20 percent or more from what a home might sell for.

"Zestimates are often wildly off target," said Barbara Ostroth, a Coldwell Banker agent in Oradell. The Record randomly checked one street in Teaneck _ Voorhees Street _ and found Zestimates ranging from $319,000 to $440,000 for similar 1955-vintage split-levels on the same block.

Zillow warns real estate agents that some clients will unrealistically "insist on setting the price they are willing to buy or sell for based solely on the Zestimate." The agents, says Zillow, should tell their clients that Zestimate "is a good starting point as well as a historical reference, but it should not be used for pricing a home."

Lorraine Bazzarelli-Porco, 42, of Fort Lee has been looking for a home for a while and likes to check out a property's sales history on Zillow.

"You know how many times it's been sold and what year and how much it was sold for," she said. "If someone bought the house for $700,000 and they're trying to sell it for $2 million, you have some room to negotiate."

Zillow and Trulia also offer advice on home buying and selling.

Ellen Weiner, a Weichert agent in Clifton, says she always suggests buyers check out municipal websites, which usually offer information on the town's history, parks, recreation programs, recycling and garbage schedules, and more. For example, a check of waynetownship.com shows the town's wide range of services _ from A, for assessments, to Z, for Zumba classes for kids.

In addition, BergenCounty.com, a website owned by North Jersey Media Group, offers profiles of towns and information on homeowner concerns such as property taxes and trash disposal.

Walkability

If you'd rather not get in the car every time you go to the supermarket, post office, school or library, Walk Score can help you figure out how pedestrian-friendly a neighborhood is. Just plug in the address, and the site will give you a score based on how many errands you can do on foot. A home with a score over 90 is a "walker's paradise," while homes ranked below 50 are "car-dependent." The site also shows how well the address is served by public transportation.

Commute

If you want to figure out how your daily commute would go from a new home, NJ Transit has a trip planner that will show your options, as well as information about schedules, fares, parking and so on.

Crime

The New Jersey State Police track crimes by municipality; you can find the information on the agency's website.

Floods

North Jersey has more than its share of flood-prone neighborhoods, as several serious recent storms have shown. Before buying a home, you can check its flood risk at the federal flood insurance program's website.

One more thing: Searching the Internet is a great way to start your home search. But it's no substitute for actually soaking up the atmosphere in the neighborhoods you may want to call home. Bazzarelli-Porco said she likes to have lunch in a town after scoping out homes for sale.

"I always recommend that people spend a day in the town," said Lisa Comito, broker at William Raveis Baer & McIntosh in Northvale. "Go shopping, have dinner and just drive around. I think buying a home is really about buying a lifestyle."

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