By admin
|
August 24, 2009
Just a quick apology and update to all of our website visitors — in the last couple weeks the Fresno Association of Realtors has switched over the software used to power the Fresno MLS (Multiple Listing Service). The new software is called CalREDD and is part of a new Statewide MLS system that’s sure to grow larger and larger throughout the state. Anyhow, we’re happy to report that all of our systems have been updated and all of the sites should be displaying new listings again!
As mentioned earlier, we’re trying extremely hard to offer amazing information for you the home buyer on all our real estate sites. The latest added feature for FresnoRealEstate.com is we’ve incorporated Walkscore.com’s WalkScore into each and every listing you see on the site. After clicking on a listing you should notice the “WalkScore” item on the details menu. (See the screenshot below)
walkscore-tab
After clicking this, you should be shown the WalkScore tile. (See screenshot below for an example of the Walkscore Tile)
Walkscore Tile Example
So what exactly is a WalkScore? The brief explanation is that it’s basically how good a property rates in terms of having walking access to all the most common types of local resources one would need, like schools, stores, restaurants, etc. For a detailed explaination of what Walkscore is and how it works see the following link: http://www.walkscore.com/how-it-works.shtml
As you can see from the picture above, the selected house I chose has a terrible WalkScore (45/100) — which may be very important to me as a buyer.
This is just the beginning of the many features you’ll see gradually released over the next few months. As always, we hope you find these features useful as a buyer.
Quite a few people have taken notice to our new Zillow.com Zestimate integration on both fresnorealestate.com and fresnoforeclosures.com — we can tell by the statistics that it’s extremely popular! So, it was only a matter of time before we released a super-easy way to view all the homes in the Fresno / Clovis area that are listed far lower than what Zillow.com thinks it’s worth…
And now you have it! Introducing: www.fresnorealestate.com/deals
FresnoRealEstate.com Deals lets you easily and quickly see which homes are the best values according to Zillow. And, it’s updated every day. We think this is a fantastic tool for both investors and home buyers alike — and just like everything else we do, it’s completely free to use for all.
Stay tuned — we have a whole SLEW of amazing new features that we think will really change the way people in the Central Valley search for real estate.
I’ve got some exciting news — over the last 6 months or so we’ve been hard to work in taking FresnoForeclosures.com to the next big thing. That next big thing was using our same recipe for easy-to-use home searching to cover the entire spectrum of Real Estate in Fresno, Clovis, and the surrounding areas. As of last week, we launched FresnoRealEstate.com. It offers the same easy-to-browse functionality as FresnoForeclosures, except it covers the entire Residential Real Estate market.
In the next week’s, we’ll be launching one very cool feature per week. We think these features will REALLY begin to empower the home buyer to find the exact home they’re looking for… and, due to popular demand, we’re launching the same technology base to browse Rentals, New Homes, and Commercial property.
Stay tuned for more.
If you visit fresnoforeclosures.com, you’ll notice a brand new look! We’ve made a ton of changes and built a brand new look that we can use to implement a bunch of new features which we just couldn’t fit in the old design.
Some New Features / Improvements Include:
- Integrated dynamic google map that’s including on the index search page. Note: when moving from house to house on the listings, the map actually re-aligns with the selected property to give you an idea of the area it’s in.
- Search box is moved to the top for convenience. When selecting search criteria, the form remembers what you selected and highlights the fields.
- The Search Listings pagination actually works. We fixed quite a bit of bugs regarding the paginating of search results… I think I’ve finally nailed this down, but we’ll see.
- On the listing page, more details from the MLS are added to the screen.
- On the listing page, if you came from a previous search, your search results are remembered and a “Click here to go back to your search results.” link is displayed so you can continue browsing the search where you last left off.
- On the listing page, a new price box is available that shows the listing price + monthly payment based on last week’s average interest rates.
- On the listing page, when clicking “Click for Financing” in the price box — this launches in-browser window (pop-up blockers don’t block these) dynamically generating a Mortgage Calculator sponsered by Mid Valley Financial. The calculator auto-fills the Sale Price and is editable to allow changes to Percentage Down, Interest Rate, Length of Mortgage, etc.
- On the listing page, the center of the page is dedicated to additional details of the home. These include:
- A Google Map with Marker and Address
- A Google StreetView of the property.
- In browser Photo carousel. (There were complaints of the current pop-up method of showing photos.)
- Zillow Zestimate integration which also includes Last Date / Amont Sold and Tax Assessment information from zillow.com
We’re still working out some of the bugs with the new design, but I hope you find it helpful in your home search! As always, feel freeto let me know what you think — good or bad.
If you haven’t signed up for Trulia’s newsletters, I would certainly recommend doing so. If you don’t want the email, you can also view them online at info.trulia.com. The latest newsletter has some nice little tid bits about taxes and real estate owners and potential buyers.
 |
Property taxes: What are the basics? |
|
Q: How are property taxes determined?
Asked by Ama, Home Buyer in UK
A: Your home’s value is determined by your county property appraiser. Then, based on the deductions (homestead, widow, etc) a taxable value is determined. That value is multiplied by the prevailing rate for your county and your tax liability is determined… |
| Read more or reply |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Which has greater tax impact: Size or location? |
|
Q: How do we play the property tax game when buying a house?
Asked by Maya, Home Buyer in Westchester County, NY
A: When I was starting in Real Estate many years ago the advice that Realtors gave their clients was to try to purchase a property in a very good area, even if it was the least expensive property in that area. I am sure that the same rule still applies… |
| Read more or reply |
|
|
|
 |
Can you reassess to get lower property taxes? |
|
Property taxes too high?
I was recently asked – I purchased a property [in CA] at the peak of the market in 2005. With my home value down now, how can I get a reassessment on my property taxes? Is it worth doing? The quick answer is that…
Written by MaryAnn Morrar, Real Estate Pro in San Diego, CA |
| Read more or comment |
|
|
|
 |
What are the capital gains rules on 2008 sales? |
|
Selling Homes & Tax Rules
Well it is tax season and I thought it would be a good time to talk about selling houses. The law changed about ten (10) years ago and you no longer roll the profit from previous homes. A few rules to follow to exclude $250,000…
Written by Pat Baker, Real Estate Pro in Needham, MA |
| Read more or comment |
|
|
Good article in the NY Times about Zillow beginning to appear on many local newspaper websites: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/newspapers-begin-to-use-zillow/
It really was only a matter of time before this happened. The home browsing experience offered by sites like Zillow, Trulia, and Hotpads are typically much better than what local newspapers use. The only exception to this is the fact that all of them generally farm out the foreclosure listings to 3rd party companies with monhtly subscription fees. But, with sites like FresnoForeclosures.com, this of course doesn’t apply to us here in the Central Valley =)
By admin
|
February 1, 2009
We made a couple changes to fresnoforeclosures.com. The most prominent of which is the ability to select the entire row when searching for homes. The row highlighting and ability to click anywhere on a particular listing to open that listing is just a small usability detail that needed attention. Despite our best intentions — a slight bug in our coding mucked up the site for Internet Explorer ver 6 users for 2 days. We’re terribly sorry about that and it is now corrected.
Second, we’ve taken the same easy to use site template and format and launched foreclosure search pages for a couple more individual cities. So, now www.maderaforeclosures, www.sangerforeclosures.com, www.reedleyforeclosures.com, and www.selmaforeclosures.com are live and usable. As always, we strive for simplicity for our users — and for someone who lives in Madera it’s much easier to remember maderaforeclosures.com, then it is to remember fresnoforeclosures.com and remember to select “Madera” from the city drop-down.
We’ve also got a few more exciting changes we’re working on — that are more significant and involve an amazingly simplistic and advanced home finder for non-foreclosure listings in Fresno and Clovis. Stay tuned!
By admin
|
January 5, 2009
First off, Happy New Year everyone. To kick off the New Year’s we’ve made some small changes to the FresnoForeclosures.com homepage.
- We’re keeping more up-to-date as to the current status of listings in the Fresno MLS. Last night we implemented the first half of nightly status updates to listings and more thorough inspection so that we don’t miss properties that change from pending back to active and vice versa.
- By default, the front page will only list foreclosures in Fresno/Clovis. In order to see other cities, you’ll need to use the drop-down selection box on the left. The reason for doing so is because most of our audience for the site is interested in only Fresno and Clovis — however, towns like Madera have so many foreclosures that they’re taking priority and filling up the front page.
- We’re now pulling ALL active listings from the Fresno MLS. This includes towns like Kerman, Lemoore, Chowchilla, and even Bass Lake. These can be selected from the drop down menu on the left. If a city isn’t listed, it’s simply because there are no foreclosure listings for that city.
- Because of the sheer amount of foreclosures in Madera we’re launching another sister site: www.maderaforeclosures.com. This will allow those interested in only viewing Madera foreclosures the same easy to use interface as fresnoforeclosures.com.
That’s a small update of our latest happening. Stay tuned for some more updates to my own site www.gregruud.com, as well as some new killer features that should help home buyers be even more effective in their home hunting.
By admin
|
December 30, 2008
Just came across this article in the NY Times entitled “Skaters Jump in As Foreclosures Drain the Pool“. The article highlights the positive side of foreclosures: more empty pools for skaters. Interestingly enough, Fresno makes the first page of the article.
I also found this particularly interesting:
Some skateboarders use realty tracking sites like realquest.com and realtor.com to find foreclosed houses with pools, while others trawl through satellite images from Google Earth.
Impressive. However, what I’d like to know is how are skaters using realtor.com to search foreclosures? I don’t see that as an option on the website.
Of course, what I’m also curious about is whether or not skaters have been using my own foreclosure site, www.fresnoforeclosures.com, to search for pools. And if so, how many of those skaters are interested in purchasing the foreclosure? 
