If your is providing you with appropriate custom products and services you will be able to avoid time wasters . He had just come from the office of a real estate agent who has been in the business for decades and was very highly recommended. I surprised him by taking out my lap top computer and displaying in less than a minute information that was more useful. He saw information on properties that were too new to be in the book and found out that some of the properties that he was interested in were no longer on the market. If you do not want to waste a lot of time finding out what is on the market right now, be sure to talk to a real estate agent with a computer.
Books do come in handy.
I always keep several on hand. They make great doorstops. The advantage of supermarket handouts is that you do not have to go to a real estate office to read one. Like the book they can be useful to give you a feeling for the real estate market. I get a lot of calls from people who have perused the real estate classified advertisements or supermarket handouts and circled the properties that interest them.