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Whether you’re searching for a home, preparing to sell or just nosy about your neighbors, real estate websites include so many new features that they can become addictive.

Many real estate websites — and there are many more than those listed below — provide property listings, market reports and photos, but each company offers a few standout features, so here’s a guide to the best features of each.

Zillow. Best for a wide range of listings and market details. Zillow’s massive site and mobile apps include traditional listings as well as homes for sale by owner, foreclosure, auction, rental and new-construction listings. Includes the addictive feature “Zestimates,” or home values, for about 100 million homes, historical Zestimates and local market reports, price changes, and sales data going back decades. A source of information about all homes in most parts of the country, regardless of whether they’re on the market.

Trulia. Best for getting a feel for the neighborhood. This site offers more detailed information about neighborhoods, including details about local schools (with parent reviews, standardized test scores and other information from GreatSchools.org), crime statistics and nearby restaurants and shops that can be mapped for each home. It also includes active community forums and user ratings for neighborhoods. It’s a particularly good resource to get the sense of a neighborhood, not just a single property.

Realtor.com. Best for its size and tools. The official site of the National Association of Realtors lists 3.9 million homes for sale and more than 265,000 rentals. It says it updates 80 percent of its listings every 15 minutes and the other 20 percent at least every 24 hours. The “area highlighter” feature lets you draw a map and create the boundaries of your search and also includes clear information about recently sold homes. Listings are sent straight from the multiple-listing service with as many as four photos; agents can pay for enhanced listings to add more photos and information.

Redfin. Best for its mobile app. This large Web-based brokerage has some of the most frequently updated listing information and coolest tools. You can read comments about each house that Redfin’s agents visit and schedule home tours online. You can use the site just for its research tools, or you can work with Redfin’s salaried agents, who are paid bonuses based on customer surveys.

You can search anonymously at midnight, receive email alerts about newly listed homes or open houses, see market and neighborhood reports, map recent home-sale prices and use apps that display listing details and interior photos of nearby homes.

Almost 90 percent of homebuyers used the Internet in their house searches in 2011, according to the National Association of Realtors.

But house hunters, sellers and real estate agents say the quality of information can vary greatly from site to site, and tension is brewing between third-party syndication sites — such as Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com — and traditional real estate brokers and agents. Brokers have complained that some of the information on these websites can be inaccurate or misleading. They say outdated listings leave buyers frustrated when homes they thought were available have been sold, and they can leave sellers angry when price reductions aren’t reported quickly.

What is the biggest gripe by agents and brokers? They complain that their own for-sale listings are being used as lead-generating tools for other agents, who pay the websites for advertising space or buy a percentage of the inquiries related to when a user looks at a home in a specific ZIP code.

“Everybody looked at the Web as a great marketing tool, so they pushed everything out without thinking about the integrity of the information,” said Hoby Hanna, president of Howard Hanna Real Estate, who does business in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and West Virginia.

Hanna considered removing his firm’s 35,000 annual listings from all of the third-party sites. But the eyeballs were too valuable to give up: More than 30 million people visited Zillow in January.

A small number of brokers across the country have pulled their listings from the big websites. Still, knowing about the behind-the-scenes battles can help you figure out how to make the most of these sites while avoiding some of the problems.

“People are having to see fewer homes because they’ve done their initial research on the Internet,” said Brian Block, managing broker for Re/Max Allegiance in Arlington, Va. “It can really help you narrow down your search.”

Where does the information come from? Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com are third-party syndication sites — which means they aren’t agents or brokers — and they get their listings from a variety of sources.

Trulia, for example, has more than 1,000 data providers. The information comes directly from the local multiple-listing services in many areas — there are more than 900 in the United States — and from brokers, agents and other listing syndicators.

Agents can manage their listings on the third-party sites, even if they don’t pay for advertisements. “There was a time when I didn’t pay attention to it,” said Ken Montville, a Re/Max United real estate agent in Upper Marlboro, Md. “But now I go into all of my listings as soon as they hit Zillow and Trulia, which is usually about two days after I list it on the MLS, and I add some information. I want to make sure that I as the listing agent am associated with the house.”

Montville registered free with Zillow, so his information will appear with his listings. But because he hasn’t bought any of Zillow’s advertising programs, the names of agents who bought space in a ZIP code where his homes for sale are located might also appear.

He does pay another website — Trulia — just less than $1,000 per year to ensure his contact information will appear every time someone searches for a home in the 20740 ZIP code through Trulia’s Local Ads program. “It’s not cheap by a long shot,” he said. “I get occasional leads but no solid business.”

Montville also pays about the same amount to advertise his listings at Realtor.com, which also allows him to add more pictures and details about the homes.

Redfin’s listings are updated more frequently because it is an actual brokerage — a Seattle-based Web-based brokerage that also has local agents. It also has direct access to listings services similar to local brokerages. Redfin also includes notes from its agents who have visited the house, reviews of Redfin agents, a popular mobile app and tools to help you do your own market analysis. Redfin identifies the listing brokerage in small type but next to the listings includes contact information for its own salaried agents, who receive bonuses based on customer-satisfaction ratings.

“Our business has been growing like crazy,” said Glenn Kelman, Redfin’s chief executive. “But it’s easier to get someone to search our site for listings versus to give a Redfin agent a try.”

Renata and Jeremy Ko of Washington used Redfin, Trulia and the local HomesDatabase.com for their search after their son was born 18 months ago. They wanted to move from an apartment to a neighborhood with young families and a good elementary school.

They used the websites to learn about the marketplace and neighborhoods, then contacted an agent who gave them listings and alerts that were similar to the listing information they had found.

“I figured that if we’re going to work with an agent, we might as well get the listings from him,” Renata Ko said. “We don’t have a lot of free time, and the value of the agent was also to help us negotiate, pull up comparable sales and let us know about houses that aren’t on the market yet.”

The agent also helped with intelligence-gathering, Renata Ko said. And it worked: The couple recently put a contract on a house that never appeared on any website. Their agent found it for them before it went on the market.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.