Whether you are new to Texas, new to Houston, or just new to Kingwood , finding a home can be a challenge. There are an overwhelming number of possibilities, so where do you start? Which schools are the best? Is the home priced right for the neighborhood?

Luckily for Kingwood homebuyers, the Houston area has one of the best Multiple Listing Services (MLS) in the nation and it has a number of features to make looking for a home easier.

HAR.com  is the MLS for Houston homes primarily; however, it also includes the counties of Brazoria, Galveston, Liberty, Waller, besides the Houston counties of Harris, Montgomery and Fort Bend.   

With the click of a mouse, those looking to find Kingwood homes for sale can quickly search available properties, by price, neighborhood, amenities, and radius.

Below are some tips on how to use HAR.com to to find the neighborhood and Kingwood home that is just right for you.

Visit Har - Find Kingwood Texas Homes

If you relocated to Kingwood, you may have used other home listings sites, such as Realtor.com or Homes.com , to research the area.

You may be comfortable with those sites and wonder why you need to learn to use something else. Sites like those are aggregators and have national coverage, which means that they pull information from the regional MLS sites for their information.  

It is secondhand information and can take anywhere from two days to two weeks to be updated. Which may not seem like a lot, but can be all the difference in getting "the" perfect house for you (our house was only on the market one day and had multiple offers).

Why not go straight to the source?  New listings and updates are input directly to HAR.com by Realtors.  You can be viewing information online literally minutes after it is listed.

So let's get started!

Go to HAR.com and click on "Find a Home, Find a Realtor"

Under "Select a Property Type," click "Single Family."

Kingwood Texas Area Homes

There are a couple of ways to zero in on homes in the Kingwood area.

MLS Area:  After property type, the most broad classification in the MLS is area.  Click on "View MLS Area Map" to see the boundaries.   Most of Kingwood is in area 32 (Far Northeast).  However, this also includes areas outside of Kingwood and does not include the villages south of Lake Houston (Kings River and Kingwood Glen).  To pick up those areas, you would also need to search in area 1 (Northeast).

Location:  A more specific search would be by location, which would be 50 for Kingwood.  The accuracy of this depends on whether or not the listing Realtor knows what is Kingwood and what isn't (sometimes out of town offices don't).

Zip:  You could also search by zip code, for example, homes in "up front" Kingwood (77339).  Codes 77339 and 77345 are exclusively Kingwood zip codes.  77346 is also part of Kingwood, but covers parts of Atascocita and Humble as well.

Subdivision:  Of course, you can always search by subdivision, or as they are known in Kingwood, "villages."

Finding Your Kingwood Neighborhood

Since our goal is to get familiar with the Kingwood villages, let's use that for the search criteria.

In the "Subdivision" field, enter "trailwood" (the first Kingwood village developed).

Under "Location," select "50 - Kingwood." (This is just in case there is another subdivision in the Houston area with a similar name.)

Click "Search."

All the homes listed for sale in Trailwood will be displayed in a short summary format. 

Get a Neighborhood Overview

Now comes the fun part.  Find a home that looks interesting and click on the "map" link in the listing summary.

A new window will display with the home located on a Google map.

Next, in the "Proximity Search" column, click "Submit" to  view all listings within a one mile radius of the home you selected.

Homes for sale will be listed with a blue icon.

Homes for lease will be listed with a purple icon.

Click on an icon to view a thumbnail and details of the home.

Use the mapping feature to:

• Get an overview of home prices for the neighborhood.
• Zero in on good buys. (Is it underpriced for the area?)
• Identify a buyer's market. (Is there an overabundance of homes on the market.)
• Identify a declining neighborhood. (Are too many rental properties available.)
• Identify "hot neighborhoods." (If there are limited properties available in a neighborhood, be ready to act quickly if a home you like comes up.)

Kingwood Realtors

Keep in mind that as powerful as the public features on HAR.com are, they pale in comparison to the tools your Realtor will be able to use to target your home search.

Realtors will be able to fine-tune your search by area, amenities, and features.

Custom searches can be saved and emailed to you on a daily basis, or you can view potential homes on your own web-based client center. 

The public search is great if you are just curious about what is on the market.  However, if you are serious about finding a home in Kingwood, be sure to sit down with your Realtor to get up-to-the-minute updates.