Web Sites that Bring You Home. Latest Innovations Give Home Buyers More Power

For many home buyers, a remodeled kitchen or a big back yard are irrelevant to the house hunt — they care most about the neighborhood schools. Now those buyers can search online for homes in a specific school district.

That new feature at http://www.Trulia.com is an example of the latest passel of real estate innovations to hit the Internet this week. Sites are competing to deliver the newest, most complete, most consumer-friendly services to would-be home buyers and sellers in the hopes of wooing both consumers and advertisers.

“Search by school district, unsurprisingly, was the No. 1 request” from Trulia users who gave early feedback to the year-old San Francisco real estate search engine, said Trulia co-founder and Chief Executive Pete Flint. The feature covers 12 states, including California, Arizona and Nevada. “School district and nearby schools are one of the key reasons people choose neighborhoods,” Flint said.

By Sue McAllister
Mercury News

Full Story: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/15205861.htm