Home

Real Estate

• http://www.trulia.com/
  • Property search. Basic info.
  • Stats & trends by neighborhood or even housing complex
  • Foreclosures by neighborhood or even housing complex
  • Redfin - Online real estate agent. Redfin refunds 1/2 the agent's commissions to the home buyer.
    • Good interactive Google Maps-based home finder:
      • Shows city boundaries
      • Filter by: House, Townhouse, Condo
      • Filter by: MLS listing, For-sale-by-owner, Bank-listed foreclosure
      • Filter by: Price, Bedrooms, Baths, SqFt, Lot Size, Parking Age, New Listing, Open Homes, Days on Redfin
  • NewHomeSource - Search for new home construction
  • New Homes in Mountain View
• Palo Alto Online
  • Recent Home Sales

Realtors

• Arjani Homes - Real Estate, Keller Williams
  • Good neighborhood descriptions:
  • Mountain View Neighborhoods
    • St. Francis
    • The Crossings
    • Blossom Valley
  • Menlo Park
    • The Willows
• Emily Chiang - Realtor, Coldwell Banker
  • Cities - Palo Alto, Los Altos Hills, Menlo Park, Atherton, Los Altos, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Saratoga
  • Good interactive Google Maps for Open Homes by city. Not sure how up to date the maps are.
  • School maps for all above cities, but no school boundaries.
  • Basic monthly stats on Sales Volume and Median Price - Doesn't seem that useful.
• Margaret Grant - Broker Associate, Alain Pinel
  • Links to 2008 home sales information
    • Cities: Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Los Altos
    • Per-home info includes: List price, sale price, above/below amount/percentage, price per sqft
• John Feytn - Coldwell Banker
  • Well researched advice and good commentary.
  • Lots of interesting articles.

Cities/Counties

• Santa Clara County and Cities Boundaries Map (2001) - detailed city boundaries map of all Santa Clara Counties, but only shows major street names.
• General South Bay City Map - Overview image map. Not detailed enough to know where boundaries are
• Zip Code Maps ($)

Distressed Properties

A distressed property goes through three phases:

1. Short sale - when owner tries to sell the house below the outstanding mortgage amount
2. Foreclosure - When the short sale doesn't go through and the property is foreclosed, the bank puts it up for auction.
3. REO/Bank owned - When the property doesn't get auctioned off, it comes back to the bank as REO/Bank owned. Normally the bank will sell via the MLS/real estate agent route.

Remodeling

• Remodeling: Cost vs Value Report 2007

Miscellaneous

• Department of Real Estate (DRE)