Was it really only 14 years ago?! When I purchased my home?! It took me several years of exhausting legwork and nagging local real estate agents to get my home. They dragged their feet, I tell you what. Well, sure, I was picky but STILL. I remember driving around all the surrounding towns, looking for homes or plots of land for sale. Back then, we didn’t have the Internet and I had to rely on the sparse listings in the newspaper, the real estate agents who didn’t want to reveal their “insider” information, or me driving around.
Today, it’s really changed. Even though I don’t plan on selling and re-buying anything in the near future, I still like to keep up with the real estate market. I have a few websites I check and quite a number of real estate apps, too. I LOVE looking at listings and looking through homes. I tell ya, I would be a realtor, if I could. I love houses, everything about them (except the property taxes). I just like to know what the housing market is doing, how it’s going, what people are doing with their homes. Homes are a MAJOR investment, so what people do with them tells about their priorities and the neighborhood “mood” (I think so, anyway). I also see that taxation has a lot to do with the market and with renovations. In high-taxed areas (like mine), people just don’t have enough money or are not motivated to keep up the homes. But in places with lower taxation, the houses and neighborhoods are much nicer and pleasant. I wish state and local governments would get that through their thick skulls…. if we’re impoverished trying to pay all these taxes every year, there’s no way we can hire a reputable Florida home builder to build a nice home. Not even a warranty helps in such a situation.
Anyway, I LOVE the Internet!! I’m ready, next time I need to get a property.
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