Why you need a Buyer's Agent for your next Kansas City Home Purchase

While the painful real estate swoon appears likely to extend well into 2009—at least—the number of Americans using the Internet to find the home of their dreams is poised to keep on climbing. According to the 2008 National Association of Realtors Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 87 percent of home buyers used the Internet to search for homes in the past year. That's up steadily from 84 percent in 2007, 80 percent in 2006. But despite its mounting popularity, the Internet home-buying process can present a host of pitfalls. To help make your online real estate searching more effective, here's a look at the top five Internet home-buying blunders and what you can do to avoid them.

1) Assuming you can do it all yourself. The Internet allows users to handle for themselves many of the tasks that could once only be performed by real estate agents. The NAR profile, for example, found that the number of home buyers who first learned of their homes on the Internet has been rising in recent years—to 32 percent in 2008, up from a tiny 2 percent in 1997. Accordingly, the number of home buyers who first learned of their homes through agents has been declining—it was at 34 percent in 2008, down from 50 percent in 1997.

But although the Internet can provide heaps of helpful tips and research, it would be a mistake to assume that the Web is all you need to buy a house. The process of purchasing real estate can be extremely complicated from a legal standpoint, and it's easy to make a mistake if you don't have an expert advising you. And when it comes to something as expensive as real estate, those mistakes could cost you thousands of dollars. 

2) Looking too narrowly. The sheer amount of information about the real estate market online can be overwhelming. As a result, buyers can be tempted to stick to just one or two popular real estate search engines, like Realtor.com, for their research. The problem with doing that, however, is that you're missing out on the biggest advantages that the Internet offers.

First, you're closing yourself off to a smaller cross section of the homes that are out there. "A lot of the sites aren't comprehensive and don't have all of the new listings. Don't assume that because a house is on one real estate website that it is on them all.

Second, you miss all the breaking, up-to-the-minute information on the housing market that can make you a smarter consumer. Blogs have become a popular resource for real estate agents and others to post information as it happens. If consumers are interested in a local area, they should find local real estate bloggers who know this breaking information.

3. Falling for fake listings. Remember, the Internet is a giant playground for scammers, and unfortunately they have penetrated the world of online home buying as well. Combine big dollars for online advertising and a lot of people searching for homes, and the result is a proliferation of fake home listings. Unfortunately, some real estate agents will also market their previously SOLD listings to entice buyers to call them, then simply attempt to switch the buyer to another property.  Working with a Buyers Agent that knows the entire Kansas City market and has access to all the very best homes will prevent you from these unscrupulous scams.

4. Putting too much stock in home valuation websites. Sites like Zillow.com and Cyberhomes.com have changed the way people buy homes by putting pricing information at buyers' fingertips. But they're not infallible. Don't assume to know what the value of a home should be based on what these sites tell you about the neighborhood. There are many elements of a home's value that home valuation sites cannot incorporate. Take their values with a grain of salt.