My wife and I just recently signed another one-year lease at our current apartment. We like the apartment, it's quiet and safe. However, I haven't put the house hunt and my real estate self education on hold. Here are some of the more recent websites that I have found helpful:
The Wall Street Journal's personal finance section has a "how-to-guide" on a wide variety of personal financial planning topics, including purchasing a home.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Development's (HUD) website contains plenty of useful information. This link will take you straight to their nine step guide to buying a home. I have also utilized this website to find HUD homes for sale. According to their website, a HUD home is a 1 to 4 unit residential property acquired by HUD as a result of a foreclosure action on an FHA-insured mortgage. HUD becomes the property owner and offers it for sale to recover the loss on the foreclosure claim.
Zillow is a great tool to search for homes in your area. You have the opportunity to search for houses based on 11 different criteria, from the number of bedrooms to lot size. I've used Zillow to figure out the average home prices in most neighborhoods of my hometown. You can even search comparables on the homes closest to those listed for sale.
There's still plenty of information to cover and I have a great deal of questions that I will be trying to answer over the next year or two, but I feel that these websites are great resources to utilize throughout the process.
