From Cyberspace to Living Space: Using the Web to Buy a Home

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From Cyberspace to Living Space:
Using the Web to Buy a Home

By Steve Stecklow
From The Wall Street Journal Online

Traditional real-estate agents obviously have good reason to feel nervous these days: The Internet threatens to demolish the way they earn commissions.

I learned this first-hand recently when I bought my house online.

Well, sort of. It wasn't exactly like Amazon's "one-click" shopping. But after a fair amount of time and effort, including hours driving around with a real live broker and a Web search that helped me dodge a house near a radioactive-waste site, I wound up with a great house for my family -- and a sizable and perfectly legal kickback on the sales commission.
-- February 16, 2006

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