Condos: Two Stop Shopping

May 19, 2008
Lynnsy Logue The Real Estate Lady® and Condo CanDo® in Charlotte, NC

Condominiums: Two Stop ShoppingBuyers are smart. So are sellers. When you enter either mode, you are usually focused on finding out everything you can…gather the information, parse it out, ask questions. As we all know the Internet makes that journey both simple and complex. Google is both our best friend and the tantrum thrower…we can search but we get just everything.

Here are two websites that almost pure in the information. One is our regional realtor associations’ Multiple Listing Service. Now folks, this is the whole database and you can search by single family or condo, by area, by price and you get lots of good information. Not everything we get as members, but enough to start painting your picture. This is the very database that all the broker’s sites pull their information from. All. There is a Broker Exchange that allows us to get listings from other brokerage firms and put them on our own websites. Here is the URL of our main database: www.CarolinaHome.com.That is singular “Carolina” and singular “home”.

The other website is the city-county real estate website. Here you can get a copy of the deed, a picture of the property, the tax bills, the owners, you can play to your hearts content and it is quite easy. Instead of giving you the very long address, just go to Google and enter Mecklenburg(with a “u”) Polaris. When the screen comes up, go to the right hand corner and click on search. Look to the left and you have fields to enter for searching. They do not all have to be filled in…it kind of works on a default so it can be used by the most challenged. This is a great place to see what the neighbor paid, what the lot looks like, if it’s in a floodplain and more.When looking for new construction you can most often enter the name of the condo complex you might be interested in…in Google of course. And remember on new construction, you can have representation by your own agent because the builder will pay the commission and it doesn’t effect your purchase price.
Oh, by the way on CarolinaHome.com, you can also get listing information like high and low prices by area. And there are plenty of maps to help you with areas.

Have a good time and if you need help, I am here.

Lynnsy Logue The Real Estate Lady® and Condo CanDo® in Charlotte, NC