You would think that buying a home from a corporation would proceed in a timely, business-like manner. In my experience, couples and individuals are far more responsive when selling their homes.

I think the difference is primarily due to individual homeowners having far more to gain if a sale is successful, than corporate employees who don’t personally benefit from a sale. For the corporate employee signing a contract, providing the deed or making sure that the water bill is paid before the closing are just tasks among the many others on their desks. They have no empathy for home buyers who have lined-up movers and have their lives sealed in cardboard boxes.

If you buy a corporate-owned home, be prepared for the process to take longer.

More than one buyer included a letter with their offer about how much they wanted move back to Norwood Park. There were so many people interested in the home that one neighbor complained about all the inquires, so I had the for sale sign removed before the sale closed.

For the first 6 months of 2006, the median house price in Norwood Park was $371K. Today, houses for sale in Norwood Park are more affordable. For the first 6 months of this year, the median house price was $330K.

Kay ran the same search for a house in Evanston priced between $400K and $500K with at least 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms on the SunTimes.com and the ChicagoTribune.com. She concluded that since her site returned 18 homes and the ChicagoTribune.com only returned 15, that her site is the “best bet”.

I respectfully disagree. The Sun-Times’ SearchChicago-Homes only returned 8 of the 13 homes I found when I ran that same search in Chicago’s multiple listing system. Thus, the site does not provide all homes listed in the Chicago Metro Area. In addition, it returned 5 multi-family properties. The search was for houses, not 2 flats and 3 flats. The SunTimes.com search also returned one listing under contract and 2 results for the same home, one with a price of $479K and another for the same house with a price of $439K.

ChicagoTribune.com did a little better returning 10 of the 13 homes listed. It also returned the same listing under contract and 3 homes with 1 1/2 baths, less than the 2 specified.

As I wrote yesterday, if you want access to all homes for sale listed in the Chicago Metro Area, use BairdWarner.com.

In the article Mr. Crook tells home sellers to list their homes on leading real estate websites which include Trulia, Zillow, Cyberhomes, Eppraisal and Realtor.com. If these are good places to advertise a home for sale, shouldn’t they be good places to search for a home for sale?

Yesterday I did a test to see how good these sites are for searching for homes for sale. In the Chicago area’s multiple listing system, I found 13 houses for sale in Evanston priced between $400K and $500K with at least 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Here’s what I found for the same search on these national real estate websites:

Trulia.com - Only 9 of the 13 listed homes were returned. In addition, it returned 3 multi-family homes and one house under contract since July 8th.

Zillow.com - Only 6 of the 13 listed homes were returned. In addition, 2 multi-family properties and 14 houses in Skokie came back in the search results!

Cyberhomes.com - Only 2 of the 13 listed homes were returned.

Eppraisal.com - This site doesn’t even offer searches for homes for sale. It provides data on past sales.

Realtor.com - Of the 5 national real estate websites, Realtor.com provided the best results with 12 of the 13 listed homes. Yet, it still was missing 1 listed home which has been on the market for a few weeks now. It also displayed a few listings that were under contract.

I decided it was only fair to give my broker’s site, BairdWarner.com, the same test. It returned all 13 listed homes. It also returned 4 homes temporarily off market.

Trulia, Zillow, Cyberhomes and Eppraisal may have some good information for home buyers, but they aren’t great places to search for a home for sale. Thus, I also think there are better places to advertize a home for sale. Realtor.com is definitely the best national site to search on, but I often have clients send me listings from Realtor.com that are under contract or have even sold. If you want access to all homes for sale listed in the Chicago Metro Area, use BairdWarner.com.

UPDATE 7/18/08: For those of you who found this post via the Chicago Sun-Times article, “This site tops for search results”, please read my response post, “SunTimes.com & ChicagoTribune.com Join Real Estate Search Test” for my SunTimes.com and ChicagoTribune.com test results.

One Bartlett house had a large window between a bedroom and the rest of the basement. It looked like whoever occupied it was on display! Another Bartlett home for sale had several closets with no handles on the doors. You could only open them by pulling from the tops of the doors. However, I decided the day’s winner for the truly unusual was the vacant house in Carol Stream featuring a fully intact hornets’ nest in the basement (shown left).

I may have the insect wrong. Maybe it’s a wasps’ nest. But whatever kind of nest it is, it certainly made us pause when got to the basement!

They then put their 2 bedroom Lincoln Park condo on the market. It has awesome views of the lake and city and with a reasonable price, it wasn’t long before offers started coming in. Of course, they want to time the closing of their condo’s sale with their new construction purchase. So they also kept an eye on how Library Tower was progressing. When the first units for delivery were due and it was obvious that the building wasn’t ready to move into, they pressed for an update. Sure enough, the new estimated delivery for their condo was moved back to mid-September!

Such delays with new construction are not uncommon. If you can’t be flexible with a move-in date, you may want to consider a resale home instead.

However, I will list homes for sellers who are looking to buy another home in the Chicago Metro Area and occasionally, I get requests to list homes from former clients and referrals from other agents. Due to one such referral, I met yesterday with a woman and her daughters about listing her house in the Waverly Park Neighborhood of Rolling Meadows.

One of my strategies in selling a home is to emphasize what makes the home unique. In this case, it’s the home’s basement. 60% of houses for sale in Rolling Meadows have no basement!^* This is in stark contrast to Rolling Meadow’s neighbors, Arlington Heights, Palatine, and Schaumburg. Only 11% of houses for sale in Arlington Heights have no basement, with 19% for Palatine and 27% for Schaumburg.

^*Based on Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED) Data.

The median price of a house in Northfield for the past 6 months was $832,500, down 19% from the same period a year ago^*. However, if you compare the median price for the last 12 months, $927,750, to the prior 12 months, the median price actually increased 3%.

Northfield’s downtown consists primarily of 2 strip malls which include the popular Three Tarts Bakery & Cafe (shown left).

^*Based on Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED) Data.

The house was foreclosed on a couple of years ago so it’s now owned by the lender. To minimize the risk of damage to the vacant house, the lender had the house winterized. When a house is winterized, the water pipes are emptied and anti-freeze is put in the traps including sinks, showers and toilets. Toilets are often taped closed as shown left.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t complete the inspection today. The plumber who tried to de-winterized the house so the plumbing could be checked discovered that the water was turned off by the city of Aurora. Apparently, the seller is behind on paying the water bill!

Amenities can still be displayed. This map shows the restaurants in the area using red squares.

Interested in a different neighborhood? Just drag the map with your mouse to change the location or scroll to the right and enter a new city.

To use this feature on BairdWarner.com, click the “Map this property” button on a listing’s page.