Odds are, you’ve searched for homes online at some point — either to buy, to get intelligence so you could sell or to satisfy your curiosity. What sites did you find useful? Clever? Frustrating?The Baltimore Sun’s real estate section spent time checking out sites recently Realtor.com, Zillow.com, Longandfoster.com, Trulia.com, Homesdatabase.com, Homescape.com and Cbmove.com. rates them in a story today. The criteria:

We evaluated the sites based on a variety of elements, including how easy it was to find homes within our search parameters and how accessible the listing was, how many clicks we had to endure, and if there was helpful and meaningful information about neighborhoods and schools. Although we included the number of homes that each site turned up, it did not figure heavily in our criteria.

Read the full Rating the home-search sites story

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — With mortgage foreclosures throwing hundreds of families out of their homes here each month, dismayed school officials say they are feeling the upheaval: record numbers of students turning up for classes this fall are homeless or poor enough to qualify for free meals.

“We’re seeing a lot more children in poverty,” said Lauren Roberts, spokeswoman for the Jefferson County school system, a 98,000-student district that includes Louisville and its suburbs.

At the same time, the district is struggling with its own financial problems. Responding to a cut of $43 million by the state in education spending and to higher energy and other costs, school officials in Jefferson County have raised lunch prices, eliminated 17 buses by reorganizing routes, ordered drivers to turn off vehicles rather than letting them idle and increased property taxes.

Read the full Hard Times Hitting Students and Schools story

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed

Homeowners who can’t sell their properties aren’t the only ones with heartburn. Fewer sales mean fewer opportunities for the government to collect taxes.As Laura Smitherman reports today, the economic and housing-market slowdowns are both eating into tax revenue, “with collections falling $73.5 million short of expectations.” Court revenue including recordation fees collected when homes change hands was $12 million (or 8.3 percent) below the forecasted amount for the last fiscal year, which ended in June.

Read the full Tax collection dampened by sales slump story

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed