I bought a house in the Cleak lake area in June. Buying the house was a frustrating process. We had an agent who has 13 years experience. She had never seen such a crazy market. Usually, you offer a few thousand under asking, and you're good. Houses were selling for over asking within days. After missing out on a few houses, we found this one, loved it and drew a line in the sand. In order to beat out the other two bidders, we had to pay $8,000 over the original asking. I don't know if the market has cooled in the last couple of months. Good luck.
Also, I have used Rockets Red Glare's wife as my agent on multiple purchases. I know you aren't in Texas, but I highly recommend her for anyone local that is looking.
I think RRG missed the part that you where you lived in Hampton Roads...which isn't in Texas. Some title company portals can find sold information too. The info is out there...you just gotta keep looking...or find an agent in VA.
It's 2013, you don't need an agent for comps. Just use redfin.com, which just recently started supporting the Houston market. Very slick and easy to use UI built on Google maps. You can see recent sold homes in the past week, month, year, etc. If you buy a house through redfin, you get 50% of the commission refunded to you. Plus, their agents are salaried and paid on performance and customer satisfaction, not on the size of their commission (which I have always thought to be a huge conflict of interest).
I bought my home for $30k less. It was $448k, we offered $410k, and settled at $418k. You just have to bargain hard, but I bought it when the housing market was down so it was easier to negotiate. And yes, I used redfin as a way to negotiate (not using their agents).
