You've made a decision to shop for a new house. You've settled on the basics: location (say, within a half-hour commute of your workplace), number of bedrooms, and price range. Now you want to get an idea of what houses are available that meet your requirements.

The internet has transformed the real estate search process, just as it has changed so many aspects of our common life. If you are like 85 percent of the home-buying public, your search will begin on the internet. For this you need a computer with a good internet connection. (If you don't own one, your public library has computers with internet connections that you can use. You may have to make an appointment for a time slot.)

There are many websites which will do a real estate search for you and give you information about houses on the market which meet your selection criteria. The purpose of this article is to say a few words about some of the major websites.

Let's begin with realtor.com. This site is sponsored by the country's leading professional real estate organization, the National Association of Realtors (NAR). This website has been around longer than most of the other sites and is one of the most widely used. Like most websites, initially it returns a list of properties with a minimum of information and one photograph. By clicking on the photograph, you can get much more detailed information and more photographs. It will also provide the name of the listing office and agent. (However, as I said in my previous article on buyer agency, you would probably be better advised to work through your own buyer's agent, rather than contacting the seller's agent.) In many cases you will also be given the street address.

About 80 percent of homes that sell are listed through real estate brokers. The rest are sold by owners (for-sale-by-owners or "FSBOs"). Another special category is foreclosed properties. The Realtors' website does not list these other types of properties, but many of the other websites do. Realtytrac.com, zillow.com, and homegain.com show broker-listed properties, FSBOs, and foreclosed properties. Note, though, that you will usually have to pay a fee to get access to the foreclosure listings. Some websites will offer a free trial period, but eventually you will have to pony up.

Increasingly, these websites are offering to give you an estimate of the market value of your house. Zillow.com provides what they call a "Zestimate," of which they say, "It is a computer-generated estimate of the worth of a house today, given the data we have available." Whether you are listing or buying, a computer-generated estimate should always be used only in conjunction with the advice of an appraiser or real estate professional who actually inspects the property.

There are websites that specialize in foreclosed properties. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development operates hud.gov, which lists properties that were financed by government loans (such as FHA loans) and have been foreclosed. There is also foreclosurestore.com, a pay site whose name says it all. There are some good deals out there, but you better know what you're doing if you venture into the foreclosure market on your own.

There are also websites exclusively for FSBOs. An example is forsalebyowner.com.

There are many websites operated by real estate offices, and increasingly, even by individual real estate agents. The main advantage of these is that they are user-friendly and locally-based. Even though some of the national firms operate national websites (for example, century21.com and coldwellbanker.com), their purpose is to refer customers to local affiliates.

One of the best examples of a local website is that of my own firm, which maintains nutshellrealty.com. It shows all Ulster County-brokered listings, from whatever office, as well as their own listings ("featured listings"). It also has links for every town in Ulster County, with community information, so that customers may become better acquainted with the area. Finally, there is a photo and a biographical piece about each agent in the firm. You can do one-stop shopping for an agent and a community, as well as a house.

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