coloradohomefinder.com
coloradohomestop.com
zillow.com
These are just a few of our favorite sites that we have been using to locate our "dream house." Of course, none of these sites really measure up for what I want. These sites allow you to search by school, neighborhood, property type, bedrooms, square footage, and a variety of other methods. However, they don't allow you to graphically select what you want. In my ideal world, I would have a website that would search MLS (property listings) for all the above criteria. In addition, you could say you wanted a commute time of X minutes. The site would contour all of this on a map. There would also be cookies on the site so that you don't have to put all this information back into the site EVERY time you visit!
Enough ranting about websites. It really is quite nice to type in your searches and have a map pop up with all the listings that work for you.
Here is a print screen of one of my searches. 202 items match my criteria. That will be narrowed down a bit, but there are a lot of homes out there!! We had our eyes on one house that looked pretty nice. Unfortunately, someone else had their eye on it as well. We are currently in a 12 month lease, and really can't be buying until around October. So we were a little bummed, but it is a good learning experience.
We saw this house today that I thought was pretty nice but Jenny did not like. It is all a matter of perspective I guess. Jenny grew up in a two-story, and I grew up in a ranch with a basement. Going into a basement brings back memories of home. Jenny has images of a dark cave. Her parents basement wasn't finished, and was more like a dark cave. So I can understand that. Living on the 2nd floor sounds nice.
So it has been a learning experience for both of us. Trying to find a nice location with things we both like. What we both think is ideal is 3000+ sq ft, 1/4 acre, and 5 miles from work. And make it within our price range. The last one gets a bit tricky. Most of the houses with a short commute time to the DTC are about twice what we want to pay. Stay tuned...We will keep you aware of new developments.
