A year ago, my wife and I were looking for the perfect new house.
We scanned newspaper ads and drove all over looking for homes in neighborhoods that met our needs. Eventually, we found a patient agent who shared her Multiple Listing Service book with us.
My wife studied it for weeks, deciphering the grainy photos and tiny type.
Today, she could just use her computer.
Monday, the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky MLS went on-line. And it's a vast improvement over the paper version.
First, the photos are larger and in color. Second, all the listings can be searched by suburb, price and number of beds and baths.
You can even limit the search by single-family, condo, farm, new listings or even open houses.
Photo and description
The search will bring up home descriptions with a thumbnail photo; click on the photo to see a larger photo with more information. There's a button to calculate your mortgage payment. (The home price and a 20 percent down payment is filled in; you supply the mortgage rate.)
Information is a little thin: just price, rooms, beds - baths, levels, basement and garage, suburb name and school district. You can link to the agent or listing company's home page, or even contact the agent by e-mail.
Right now, only residential properties are available, but the service will be expanded to include rentals, commercial property and land.
Gene Snavley, executive vice president of the Cincinnati Area Board of Realtors, estimated that 10,000 properties will be on the site when it's finished in a couple of months.
The two sites (http://www.cincymls.com and http://www.nkymls.com) also have a hyperlink so that when you're done looking on one side of the river, you can check the other.
My only complaint with the sites is the shortage of information; there's less than you would find in a standard MLS listing. In a search for farms in Kentucky, for example, many of the farm listings didn't include acreage.
''The purpose is just to introduce the public to the property,'' Snavley said. And to get the customer to call a real estate agent for more information, of course.
The Cincinnati MLS is the first in Ohio to go on-line, but the board is not leading the pack nationally. Already more than a dozen Realtor boards have joined the Realtor Information Network, operated by the National Association of Realtors (http://www.realtor.com). The Cincinnati - Northern Kentucky boards will be adding their listings to the RIN network in the next couple weeks.
The RIN network is the largest residential database with almost 200,000 homes. The listing information is a little more complete than the Cincinnati on-line MLS but doesn't include photos -- or a street address.
Destined for growth
Snavley foresees real estate information on-line growing ''in leaps and bounds'' in the next few years. Participation in the on-line MLS is optional, but Snavley said only one company, Coldwell Banker, will not include its listings.
Coldwell, like many companies, has its listings on its own Web site (http://www.coldwellbanker.com). You can search Coldwell listings nationally, including Cincinnati. There's also a mortgage calculator and a home price index that compares housing prices across the country.
Locally, Sibcy Cline's ListNet (http://www.sibcy.com) can search Sibcy listings (which are also on the MLS sites). ListNet offers photos and a little information. ReMax has a home page (http://www.remax.com) that includes Cincinnati listings in the HomeWEB area, and many local agents have their own home pages.
The on-line MLS (or ListNet or HomeWEB or CB Online) is also a good way to find the agents that sell the most homes in your area.
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of real estate Web sites today. If you're looking for homes outside the Cincinnati area, stop by Yahoo! for a quick search. I typed in ''real estate'' and got 1,000 matches. I then linked to a Canadian Century 21 site and found a wonderful 11-acre secluded lakefront farm in Nova Scotia for only $160,000 Canadian (about $118,000 U.S.).
Too bad, I'm too young to retire!
E-mail Charles Brewer with questions, comments and suggestions at cbrewer@enquirer.com.