I don't see why anyone else's play would reduce your own enjoyment. Natural resources are still abundant and most streets are not particularly crowded.
To answer the OP, yes if someone sells a house it will pop up in the realty pages. They are also opening new neighborhoods to accommodate new players and to compensate for those who have bought homes and no longer play the game (but whose houses are still off the market). A new house listing may only last a few minutes but a whole new neighborhood takes a good day or two to sell out.
I solved it by slowly upgrading.. Bought a treehouse, then a larger apartment. At each step, I'd stash all my stuff in very big bags either in the cabinet or dropped on the floor of the apartment and occasionally sell off everything boring to build up currants. When one of the Alakol moderns showed up in the listings, I snapped it up.
BTW, there are 4 apartments on my street and I've never seen anyone else online in any of them. I wonder if there's an expiration for accounts that haven't logged in for a while...
Make a direct shortcut to the Real Estate page. Load it and hit refresh. Lots of times, over and over. You'll find the house of your dreams that way eventually.
If you install http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/112151, it's a lovely script that will show you the realty sorted by price. Very very handy. =) Take advantage of it!