Useful links I've picked up from househunting

[bunnyjadwiga]

Zillow.com not only gives you estimated housing prices, it will often give you house/neighborhood frontage pictures even when Google Maps doesn't have them.

GreatSchools.net provides both parent ratings and their own ratings. Greatschools.net ratings are based entirely on standardized test scores.

http://education.state.nj.us/rc/ gives you 'New Jersey School Report Cards' which include avg pupil:teacher ratios and other statistical data, also text contributed by the school and district to the report, as well as the NCLB reports.

Comments

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

I’ve found maps.live.com with the bird’s eye view to be very illuminating. Zillow doesn’t seem to have all of the listings on it, but it has listings that don’t seem to be in the MLS and on other sites. Zillow’s zEstimate can be wildly off, as well. A multipronged search seems to be the best way to go.

For NJ browsing, http://www.coldwellbankermoves.com/Property/PropertySearch.aspx?propsearch=0
Is great. It’s a great way to see all of the listings that were just out, if you’ve scoured through all of the old ones already.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/classifieds/realestate/locations/newjersey/index.html
is helpful as well. Some counties have crime and other statistics shown in an easy to use map format.

[gerdawr.livejournal.com]

Be careful with zillow; it priced my house at 1/2 its value and gave the wrong count of bedrooms and baths. I checked my parent's address and it showed a place 1/2 way down the block away from the actual address.

Google maps does a better locating feature, I'm afraid.