What is the best site to use for searching for homes in the Chicago area?

Fran Bailey, a Baird & Warner real estate agent and real estate blogger, posted the results of a mini test she did on July 15 of the national sites: Zillow, Cyberhomes, Eppraisal.com, Realtor.com and Trulia.com on a typical Chicago-area buyer search.

She looked for a four-bedroom home in Evanston for sale between $400,000 and $500,000.

She concluded that the greatest number of results possible was 13, and that the best sites were Realtor.com, and Baird & Warner’s own site, bairdwarner.com.

She did not test the local newspaper sites, the Chicago Tribune’s real estate search, or this one, SearchChicago-Homes.

If she had, she would have found out there are more than 13 homes for sale in Evanston in that price range. The Tribune pulled 15 results, but – ta da! – the Sun-Times News Group’s site, SearchChicago-Homes, brought back 18.

Just for grins, we decided to search for homes for rent in Evanston, since we know we have more rentals than any other site in Chicago.

At first we thought we lost the bet. The Tribune returned 49 results and we had 23. Then we looked again and here is how many of the Tribune’s results were actually IN Evanston: Zero.

The Tribune uses an outside vendor to handle rentals, and apparently the vendor thinks that Libertyville and Glen Ellyn count as “Evanston.”

So for rentals and for sale properties, it looks like your best bet is still SearchChicago-Homes.

You can see Fran Bailey’s post at www.chicagometroarearealestate.com/?p=476.