How to Buy and Sell Property in the 21st Century, with Real Estate Agents

When looking for a house ten years ago, most people would have began their search at a real estate office or by just driving around town. An afternoon would be spent at the agent's office perusing current property listings from the local Multiple Listing Service (MLS). After narrowing down your options to a few desirable properties, you'd spend weeks traveling between them before making a final decision.

Today, the Internet is typically the first stop for anyone looking to buy or rent a home. You can get thousands of results from a simple keyword search on Google, narrowed down by geography. If you find a house that interests you on a Commercial Real Estate Atlanta website, chances are good that you'll be able to look at pictures and even take a virtual tour of it.

The Internet provides easy access to a wealth of information, but vetting that material for truth may be a daunting task. As of this writing, a Google search for "Denver real estate" yielded 2,670,000 results. A real estate search in even a specific area can yield thousands of results.

It is common practice for real estate transactions to be handled by a real estate agent or the property owner themselves. Agents in the real estate industry are responsible for the vast majority of transactions. (In this context, either "agent" or "broker" might be used to describe the same person.) This is owing to their extensive background in the real estate industry and the fact that they have had, at least in the past, unrestricted access to a listing of currently available homes at www.realtor-lauren.com. The fastest and most thorough property search possible was made possible by having access to this listing database.