Yahoo Homes

Author: Kaitlyn Short

Yahoo has offered services like email, news and search engine for many years. In 2012, they began offering their customers a place to help with their real estate needs. This service started exclusively with real estate listings and the buying or renting aspect of this industry. Recently Yahoo has added more to Yahoo Homes with articles about home improvements, design and other homeowner issues. A customer can come to Yahoo Homes for inspiration on the homeownership process from beginning to end. 

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The Good

• Free services
• Features
• Resources

A major positive to using the services offered by Yahoo Homes is that they are all free. There is no cost to search for a home in the customer's desired area whether to buy or rent. The customer also has access to the realtor's information to contact them about the desired home. This feature, if you will, is not the case for all real estate listing companies, so it is great for the customer to have this free option. Yahoo offers much more than just their real estate listing services. Some of the other services they offer are:

• Email
• News
• Sports updates
• Weather
• Search Engine
• And more

All of these features can be linked together through one account so the customer can save listings and articles that they find interesting or helpful. The home listings on Yahoo Homes do not always have a lot of information about the location, especially the surrounding neighborhood. Since the neighborhood is a very important part of the listing, it is helpful to have a built-in search engine to be able to look things up about the area quickly. Having all of these services in one place takes out a step for those customers who want to dig deeper and keep all of their found information organized. Similarly, Yahoo Homes offers much more than just real estate listings to their customers. They are a resource for their customers through all aspects of home ownership. For those customers who have already found a place to buy or rent, Yahoo Homes has created a database of articles on everything from design to maintenance. Their articles range in subject from how to hang a hammock to ways to boost curb appeal. It is simple for homeowners to search for what they want to know more about on Yahoo Homes, there really is something for every part of the process.

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The Bad

• Limitations

Since it is such a major decision, there are a lot of factors that go into deciding where a person will live. Most customers will want to know as much about the home as they possibly can before choosing to live there. This leads to one of the major downfalls of using Yahoo Homes: there is not a lot of additional information given about the homes listed. Some of the information that is given about the listings is:

• Size of home
• Estimated mortgage payments
• Types of heating/cooling
• Date listed
• Architecture style
• Type of flooring
• Amenities

This list depends on the listing, some have more and some have less, but these are the common features listed. Most of the listings also have a list of the nearby schools with some links for customers to read more about them. But that is the extent of the information provided about the surrounding area of the home. There is no information about what types of businesses are in close proximity, if any. So if the customer does not know much about the area or has never been there, they will have to do outside research to find out if it's the type of location they are looking for. Some other information that would be helpful for customers to have would be:

• Crime rates
• Sex offenders in area
• Parks within walking distance
• Traffic patterns

All of this information would help customers to understand more fully the home that they are looking at and might help them to make a decision. The customer might also be interested in knowing what the housing market looks like in that particular area, the price of similar houses would be very helpful to know if the customer is getting a fair price. There is definitely some additional information that would be beneficial to the customer if it was provided on Yahoo Homes.

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The Bottom Line

Overall, Yahoo Homes is a good starting place for customers searching to find a new home to rent or buy. Their free services allow them to find homes that they are interested in based on the information provided. But if the customer wants a lot of details on the listing they want, they will need to do their own research through other sites or contact the real estate agent.