My wife and I have been searching for the perfect new home for three years. In that time, we have gained a lot of good experience in Pittsburgh house hunting and these are the best tools that we have found.
An aggregator is a tool that automatically pulls information from one or more sources. There are many real estate aggregators available, but Zillow (http://www.zillow.com/) is our preferred one because it has great functionality and it has been available in the Pittsburgh region for a long time. It has more feedback and listings than the next best option, Trulia (http://www.trulia.com/), although that is a good option, too. Although Zillow aggregates from tons of sources, including private sales, new construction, and pre-foreclosure, in one convenient location, it does generally take several days for Zillow to get the updated listings. In very hot markets, this may be a deal breaker, but is not usually an issue in the Pittsburgh area.
As for realtor web sites, Howard Hanna (http://www.howardhanna.com) is the favorite for both of us, as well. The website is very functional and allows you to easily filter by school district, which is our top priority. Recently, they changed their results so that all of the results display together, whereas they used to display all of the HH listings, first. The mobile website leaves something to be desired, but they all do.
The Allegheny County Assessment website (www2.county.allegheny.pa.us/RealEstate/Default.aspx) is a great resource, once you have narrowed your search to a specific street or house. You can find historic tax and sale information, exact lot dimensions, as well as the comps used to determine tax value. You can also quickly scroll through all of the houses on a specific street. A few years ago, they removed the ability to search by name, but once you find the house or street, owner and tax-payer information is all available because it is a matter of public record. It is kind of creepy, but can be very useful when you are trying to contact an owner, directly.
The single most valuable tool, however, is the West Penn MLS (http://westpennmls.com). I believe that you must be a licensed real estate agent or broker to have access to listings, but I know there is a significant cost for access. This is the biggest advantage to using a buying agent, but is not a necessity. The really nice thing is the options for filtering over geographic address, including hand drawing an area, checking the DOM (says on market), and historical listing information. Other than that, the information is often available elsewhere for free. Believe me, though, once you have access to it, you will never want to go without it!
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