Local Multiple Listing Service best option
Over the past 10 years we Realtors have found more and more opportunities to expose your listing to prospective buyers. Craigslist now is commonly used and many of you who desire to sell your own property use this service as well.
Our MLS listings are automatically pushed to Realtor.com, the official site of the National Association of Realtors and also the most visited website for property searches nationwide. Due in part to that success, imitators have risen over the years. Sites like, Zillow, Trulia, Homefinder, Ziprealty and a myriad of others offer real estate search services. Often folks will turn to these sites in hopes of delaying contact with a real estate agent until they actually need access to the property.
One would think that this would make Realtors happy. After all, shouldn't a buyer using these services already have excluded properties that a Realtor would have needed to show them? That is partly true, but recently people have discovered that the property they have become interested in is no longer available or, that other facts about the property have been incorrectly reported on these other sites.
Our local MLS and its staff often frustrate our members with their requirements, policies and procedures that ensure accuracy and timeliness in reporting property information. Why, we even may be fined for inaccurate or incomplete data, or for not marking a property's change in status quickly enough.
These third party listing services have no power to hold anyone accountable for mis-reporting or failure to inform them of changes. It is not unusual to find the same property listed by different brokers with different prices and descriptions on these sites.
A recent study released by Trulia reveals that 69 percent of errors in online real estate listings information were directly related to third party syndication of information by non-multiple listing sources. In fact, a review of 1.2 million listings from about 250 data sources found about 120,000 inaccuracies in listings information.
The survey found that 51 percent of the errors were of price and 41 percent were status. Status means "actively on the market," "pending sale" or "sold." Through the local MLS and your Realtor, you can also determine if the pending sale status is contingent on other factors, like the sale of another property, or financing, inspections, etc. We also can tell you whether a property has expired, sold or has been taken off the market when it disappears from your search.
Locally, Realtor.com is the only service that we "feed" our updated MLS data to other than our own members' websites. These other third party search providers often rely on agents themselves to update information. The local MLS gets the information in a timely manner because they can enforce its accuracy.
So when you visit a member's site or our own Coeur d'Alene Association of Realtors site below, you can be reasonably certain you are getting the information you want - accurate information.
Trust an expert... call a Realtor. Call your Realtor or visit www.cdarealtors.com to search properties on the Multiple Listing Service or to find a Realtor member who will represent your best interests.
Kim Cooper is a real estate broker and the spokesman for the Coeur d'Alene Association of Realtors. Kim and the association invite your feedback and input for this column. You may contact them by writing to the Coeur d'Alene Association of Realtors, 409 W. Neider, Coeur d'Alene, ID 83815 or by calling (208) 667-0664.