The Internet has made our lives a whole lot easier in our lives. Everything from ordering food to checking stock prices can be accomplished with a couple clicks of the mouse. Almost every aspect of life has been affected by the Internet – with the main outcome being an easier and less time consuming alternative.

Although the Internet has been quick to tackle the easier obstacles in life, new websites are now tackling larger issues. Purchasing a house is one of the biggest and most important decisions a person will make in their life. It’s truly a life changing decision that will reverberate for years to come. When you buy a house, it will likely be the largest investment you ever make.

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Due to the enormity of the decision and all the information that is involved, most people throughout the years have depended on professionals to help ensure a quality decision is made. Real estate agents have commonly been in charge of finding homes, giving details about the homes, giving details about the surrounding neighborhood, giving details about the schools and countless other details. With little information available for yourself, you had to trust real estate agents to come up with quality information.

With new websites such as Zillow.com and Trulia.com, the average Joe now has an endless amount of real estate information available at their fingertips. In fact, the information on these relatively new websites is typically even better than the information traditionally available to professional real estate agents. Everything you could possibly want or need to know is now available online on the Internet. This is yet another example of the Internet making our daily lives easier while also saving us time!

Zillow is a website brought to you by the same people who brought the highly successful Expedia.com to fruition. Launched in February of 2006, Zillow is already one of the biggest names in the real estate industry. Virtually every real estate agent is well aware of its existence.The most commonly used feature on Zillow.com is their free “Zestimate” feature. This feature is easy to use and will give you results in seconds. All you need to do is go to the front page of Zillow.com and enter the information about a house and then Zillow does the rest. The only information you need is the address and a zip code (or city and state) and Zillow will give you an estimate for how much the house is worth!Zillow utilizes a huge amount of information when calculating the “Zestimate” of the home you inputted. While they don’t give you the exact formula that they use, many customer reviews have graded the “Zestimate” as extremely close to the actual value of the home. If you are looking for a quick and painless way to get a home price estimate, Zillow is perhaps the best place on the Internet to do so. However, Zillow is not only a place to get house estimates. In fact, Zillow.com is a top of the line web 2.0 real estate website.Web 2.0 refers to how new age websites allow user interaction, communication and idea sharing. Many of the top websites nowadays have switched their business model to become more web 2.0 friendly. However, since Zillow is relatively new, they have been a web 2.0 website since the beginning.

At Zillow, the users have an active role in the website. Users can share information with other users on the site. Users can ask questions on Zillow. Basically, users can talk to each other to help towards the goal of the website being able to offer the best real estate information on the Internet.

While Zillow takes some of the traditional power away from real estate agents, the site does keep real estate agents in the loop. Zillow.com has four main types of people using their website – home owners, home buyers, home sellers and real estate professionals. Real estate professionals can put their information on the site and they still do play a vital role in the community. From simply answering questions that users have to closing on deals, real estate professionals can get just as much out of Zillow as any of the other three main types of people using the site.

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Trulia.com is another web 2.0 real estate website that is comparable in size to Zillow. Actually, many people prefer Trulia to Zillow. Trulia.com is renowned for having the most up to date information of any real estate website. Reviews have also graded Trulia’s user experience as friendlier and more informative. For example, a question asked on Trulia.com is said to get better and more accurate responses than a question asked on Zillow.

While Trulia shares most of its features with Zillow, it does offer a “Make Me Move” option that is extremely popular. How “Make Me Move” works is if you own a home, you can enter a price you are willing to sell for – even if your home isn’t officially up for sale. Let’s say that you are happily living in your home but if someone will pay a certain price for your home, you would gladly pack up and find another home to live in. All you have to do is go to Trulia.com and enter your “Make Me Move” price. After you do that, all you will be notified if a buyer is willing to purchase your home at your “Make Me Move” price!

If you are into stats and trends, Trulia is the place to look when buying homes. It has an impressive array of numbers that can tell you a lot about homes, neighborhood, cities and states. Their information is easy to read, and just like Zillow, most of their information is free to use – including their home price estimates.

While Zillow and Trulia are currently viewed as the two leaders in the web 2.0 real estate website industry, there are a number of other real estate websites that are used by millions of people everyday. Yahoo Real Estate has the billions of dollars of Yahoo behind it and is one of the most popular real estate websites on the Internet. You can find a huge amount of information on Yahoo Real Estate, and the website also offers some web 2.0 type options.

Homes.com, Homescape.com, Oodle.com, Point2.com, RealEstate.com, Vast.com and vFlyer.com are all websites that have real estate listings and some web 2.0 features. While none of these sites are quite in the league of Zillow and Trulia, it is worth looking over these websites whether you are a homeowner, a home seller, a home buyer or a real estate professional. You can find useful information and sometimes even information not found on any other website on the Internet.

Thanks to web 2.0 technology and newly born real estate websites catering to individuals, you no longer have to depend on a professional to do the analytical work for you. Now you can get your own numbers and make your own decision. With the Internet making our lives easier in almost every reach of life, real estate was eventually going to be made easier by the Internet – and now it has!

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