It’s a bonus, of course, that you don’t pay the commissions up front – your agents commission comes out of the seller’s proceeds and was no doubt figured into the price of the house. But the real benefit is that you can save significant money on the bottom line when the transaction is finalized.

Having an experienced professional on your side when you’re talking about a contract where large sums of money change hands is simply a good idea on its face. But add to that the potential boost to your financial position as a result of the expertise an agent can bring to the table and it should be an easy decision. There are just too many ways to loose money on a deal not to have someone who negotiations Portland real estate deals on a daily basis to keep the trains (and the signature pages) running on time.

The application, which you can download in iTunes or directly onto your iPhone to sync later, is completely free: just enter the code 2370 to activate it.

Research has shown that about half of all mobile phone website browsing is performed on the ubiquitous iPhone. This is likely due to its desktop-like similarities in the browser experience. On the iPhone, the web browser is almost identical to the Safari browser you’ll find on all Apples. However, this tool takes the users experience one step further by offering the Portland real estate search functionality as an application rather than simply via Safari.

Overall, it’s a great little tool to search for Portland homes, and is sure to be a hit with younger buyers and business professionals in Portland who make up the bulk of iPhone users. Somerville will be offering more applications for other phone operating systems in the near future, including Android and Blackberry.

Elsewhere on the web: Check out this page featuring Somerville’s iPhone Portland homes search app in a discussion of mobile real estate search tips for real estate agents.

Some of the more popular places to live around Portland are Lake Oswego, West Linn, Beaverton, Hillsboro, and Tigard. All of these locations offer great Portland real estate home values and comfortable living for the family interested in moving to the Portland area.

Lake Oswego

Lake Oswego sits just west of the river, and was the site of a booming iron industry in the 1800s. Now it is a an upscale community just south of Portland. The commute is only about twenty minutes or less from the Portland downtown, and Lake Oswego boasts a country club lifestyle.

West Linn

About 20 minutes due south of Portland, West Linn is a small town of about 25,000 residents. It is a picturesque town, and sits adjacent to Oregon City. West Linn merged with several other cities over the years, including Willamette, Bolton, Multnomah City, Sunset City, and West Oregon.

Beaverton

Beaverton, OR is a town just 20 minutes west of Portland near the intersection of State Highways 217 and 8 (Southwest Canyon Rd). The quiet bedroom community site in the picturesque Tualatin River Valley, and has a population of over 86,000, making it the sixth largest in the state.

Hillsboro

For those wanting to live on the edge of town, Hillsboro may be the best choice of places to live. It sits about half an hour west of Portland, but is conveniently located off of Highway 26. The location provides Hillsboro residents easy access to the outdoors right outside its doorsteps as well as the benefits of proximity to Portland.

Tigard

The city of Tigard, Oregon is about 15 minutes from Portland to the southwest. Tigard is a great place to live, with plenty of family-friendly affordable neighborhoods to choose from. The town has about 45,000 residents and boasts a quaint downtown district that is a popular place to grab a coffee and chat with friends and neighbors.

Too many house hunters start by looking at the big national sites for property, but that is not generally the most complete source of real estate listing data. National real estate sites frequently confuse their visitors with stale listing data that is sometimes months or years old–properties that aren’t available and haven’t been for quite some time. Worse still, some listings that are on the market will not be show on the site.

This can be a big frustration to home buyers searching for homes. For instance, if a buyer is searching for Portland homes for sale, but is spending hours each day looking on a national site for Portland real estate, they may be wasting hours of their precious time with incomplete or outdated data. Suzy Homebuyer finally thinks she found the perfect home for her family, shares the listing with her husband, and makes contact with a Realtor® about the listing, only to find that the listing was sold or removed from the market six months ago.

This is quite common, actually – and there is a lot of debate among professionals about how realty data is stored and disseminated on various sites. The old listing benefited the real estate website owner who got a lot of traffic on the site as result of the stale data. It also benefited the agent who advertised on the site and sent the buyer to inquire about the listing. But the end user certainly wasn’t benefitted.

The best way to make sure you are not wasting your time by search for Portland homes or any other real estate is to make sure you are searching on a local site, not a national one. The fact is that there isn’t a service available that reliably displays listings on a national scale in a fresh and timely manner – but there is a local technology for doing it. It’s called the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), and a real estate agent who is a member can provide you with access to search the complete MLS database of homes for sale – and they will be fresh, accurate listings. It’s just a matter of using it.