We bought a house earlier this year. We spent quite a bit of time looking at potential houses before we zeroed in on ours. One of the ways we scouted for houses was by driving through neighborhoods that we were interested in and looking for ‘For Sale’ sign.
We would note the address and the realtor and go back home and check the property details online. I so wish I knew of a service like HouseFront that would have made house hunting so much easier.
HouseFront 
HouseFront has taken SMS (text messaging) to a new level. In their words,
At HouseFront, we’re taking the power of text messaging and applying it to real estate. We’re bringing accurate, immediate, easy residential real estate values directly to your mobile phone. And, with our extensive databases, we compile accurate value estimates as well as specific property details for over 100 million U.S. homes. Imagine the possibilities!
With HouseFront, while I am driving through a neighborhood and come across a house that I am curious about, I just need to send a text message with the house address to HouseFront. And I will 
instantly get back these information about the house I am looking at:
- House’s estimated value
- Number of bedrooms
- Number of bathrooms
- Square footage
- Lot size
- Year Built
The convenience of knowing all this in a moments notice while I am looking at a house wants me to go out check out some homes even if I am not going to buy it. This saves so much time of driving back and forth when you can decide right there if the house has fewer bedrooms or more bathrooms you like.
But, that’s not all. HouseFront also saves all your queries by SMS under your mobile number. So, after your stroll through your favorite subdivision, you can come back to our computer and look at all the house details listed neatly in one page.
It doesn’t end here either. Now, you can look at the house’s taxable value, estimated value, value range, recent sales history, comparable properties and a nice Google Map’s satellite view.
If you are on the lookout for houses, this site could come in real handy. If your friends are, tell them about it and they will love you to death. I did use sites like Zillow, HouseValues shopping for a house but something like HouseFront would have been just awesome.
What do you think?
Thanks for the great Post!
Thanks Stephen. I really would have found this incredibly useful in our house hunt. So, I figured it might be useful to some of my readers.. even though this is probably the worst timing with the mortgage meltdown in the US.
Wow that’s a great service. This will surely help people who want to buy and those who are planing on selling property.
HomeFront have some great tools on their website but I had not seen this one. Hasn’t technology moved on! Would you have guessed even 5 years ago, that these types of tools would be available?
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This is convenient, but I am wondering how many potential home buyers are already surfing the net via mobile when looking for homes.
Also, do you know what percentage of actual homes on the market will be available by Housefront’s service? In my market, there are times when Zillow only shows about about a third of the homes currently available. While Housefront do any better?
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