Yahoo! Homes
Is This Your Business?Yahoo! Homes is an offshoot of Yahoo.com that deals strictly with home real estate. Their search engine allows you to find homes for sale or for rent. Using their website, you can access other related subcategories such as celebrity real estate, Realtytrac, Before and After and Home Improvement.
Top Ranked Companies
The Good
- International
- States
- Agents
- Offices
- Real Estate Options
- Filtering oOptions
- Specialties
- Experience
International
As an internet search engine, Yahoo! Homes can found internationally or wherever internet is available. This is good because it allows access to real estate listings and services from anywhere.
States
Yahoo!Homes can be accessed in 51/51 states. They allow you to search listings in every State. This does not limit you to one region or area.
Agents
Yahoo! Homes doesn't have its own agents, since it is a website search engine and not an agency. However, the site connects you with agents all across the country.
Offices
Technically, Yahoo! does not have branch offices. As an online company, they operate out of their headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. To do business with them, all you have to do is connect with them online. This is much more convenient than going in to a branch or browsing physical listings in their office. You can do this from anywhere you have internet access.
Real Estate Options
Yahoo! Homes offers tools to help you sell properties, assisting sellers with pricing your home, getting a home estimate (or as they call it, Zestimate), finding home values in your area, or finding a seller's agent. You can also get what they call a Home Report, which allows you to stay informed when homes in your area sell or hit the market and stay abreast of local market conditions and receive updates on your Zestimate home value. Yahoo! helps you buy homes through providing search listings with profile pages offering tons of information on each home. They also offer home seekers a free downloadable guide, a real estate app and foreclosure centers where you can view foreclosure properties for free online. Support is offered to property owners by offering free tools such as rental listings (it is free to list rental ads on their site), an Affordability Calculator, a Rent Vs. Buy calculator, a Renter's guide and Rental app. One unique feature is offered to people seeking a place to rent. Yahoo! allows renters to fill out a Rental Pre-Application. This is intended to get you noticed by landlords and property managers in Yahoo's(and Zillow's) system. This only will be beneficial if you have a good credit score, as you have to list that in your application.
Filtering Options
Yahoo! Homes offers quite a few general filtering options: City and State, Price, Beds, and Home Type. It gets more specific with narrower filtering options. These include:
- For Sale (By Agent or Owner, New Construction)
- Potential Listings (foreclosed or pre-foreclosed)
- For Rent
- Recently Sold
- Open Houses Only
- Pending Listings
The search filter goes on to narrow it even further with Baths, Square feet, Lot size, Year Built, Days on Zillow (Yahoo's search engine partner), and Keywords. Overall, Yahoo! Homes offers a total number of 16 filtering options. Such a comprehensive search allows you to find the best real estate property to suit your needs.
Specialties
Yahoo! Homes' site offers services in a few specialties. Their specialty services include:
- Residential: Yahoo's search engine helps potential buyers or renters find house listings.
- Investment: Yahoo, through their partner real estate site, Zillow.com, allows you to find a local mortgage lender in your area.
Some similar sites with real estate search engines offer specialty services for commercial, Industrial real estate sales, Farm and ranches, Recreational properties, Lakeshore or undeveloped land. Some agents work for new home builders, selling both new construction and re-sale properties. Yahoo! Homes deals primarily with home real estate in the residential arena. If you have commercial property or need leasing or property management, this is not the place to try.
Experience
The Yahoo! domain was created over 20 years ago by Yang and Filo who were electrical engineering graduate students at Stanford University. When they first created the website it was named "Jerry and David's guide to the World Wide Web". The site was a directory of other websites, organized in a hierarchy, as opposed to a searchable index of pages. The "hierarchical" aspect refers to how the database is arranged in layers of subcategories. In March 1994, "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" was renamed "Yahoo!" The "yahoo.com" domain was created on January 18, 1995. The word "yahoo" is a backronym for "Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle" (or "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle").
The Bad
- License
- Commission/Selling Cost
License
Although Yahoo! Home doesn't have agents, an agent is required once you select your home off their website. On the profile page of each selected property, a list of agents appears for you to pick from. You can choose between real estate agents and Brokers.
Commission/Selling Cost
Since Yahoo! Homes doesn't have agents, there are no commission rates. Keep in mind that if you move forward with trying to buy a home, you'll have to contact an agent and there will be a commission. Yahoo! suggests agents but you can also find your own independently.
