Helpful links

In researching the market, I've found some sites that I visit to help me research homes on the market. Here they are:

To find a home:
www.redfin.com
- This has the best map search interface. It also shows property lines on an interactive map, has historical listing prices, historical sales of a listing, and past sales in an area. It is chock-full of data and easy to use.

www.franklymls.com
- This allows people to post comments/pictures of listings. If you want to find out more about a listing, go here and maybe someone has contributed to the site. It also allows freetext searching of listings, which can be useful. The pictures on this site are also larger than others

www.mcenearney.com
This has the most detailed search parameters that I've seen. You can search neighborhoods, detached/townhome, rent/buy, etc.

If you use these three sites, you should have about all the data you need.

To do more research, consider:

http://inter1.loudoun.gov/webpdbs/
This lets you look up tax records, past sales, plot lines, recent sales, and a bunch of other information.

http://loudounextra.washingtonpost.com/blogs/living-loco/
http://loudounextra.washingtonpost.com/guides/2008/intro/
Has a lot of info about the local area

maps.live.com
Microsoft map - same map interface that redfin uses. Lets you get a "birds eye" view - really helps you see a property. Although, if you're using redfin, you may not need this.

http://www.mris.com/reports/stats/zip_stats.cfm
This lets you see sales stats by zip code.

http://www.foreclosureauctioninfo.com/
Gives you upcoming foreclosure information

Blogs
There are a number of good blogs out there. Here are some I read:
http://www.loudounreblog.typepad.com/
http://blog.franklyrealty.com/
http://novabubblefallout.blogspot.com
http://katiewethman.blogspot.com/

And the blog has started

Hello to anyone who is reading this. Let me start off by saying what my goal of this blog is and why I have started to write it.

My goal is to create a place to talk about Ashburn, VA residential real estate. To talk about trends, pricing, or anything - as long as it's about real estate.

Why do I care? I have lived in Ashburn about 3 years. We moved here in the summer of 2005, the heyday of the market. We (my wife and I) looked at buying a home then - and much to the dismay of almost everyone we knew or talked to - we decided to rent.

We have since followed the market closely looking for the right time and place to buy. In this time, we've come to be familiar with the area, neighborhoods, schools, etc. We have also followed the market quite closely. We have come to believe some things about the market and have looked at things in a light that perhaps others haven't.

So, I am making this blog in largely an exercise for myself - to get my toughts down on paper, so to say. Hopefully, it has some benefit to others as well.