Tooling around the web this afternoon I noticed how vastly different each real estate website is. Mainly in the number of homes available to view. This led to the following infographic.
First, I went into the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) to search for homes in four Fox Valley towns including St Charles, Geneva, Batavia and North Aurora, Illinois. So this is my base, as the homes in the MLS are most accurate and up-to-date.
Then I headed over to Zillow, Trulia, Homes.com and Realtor.com to see what they had to offer. I didn’t expect the numbers to jive 100% but the differences quite frankly surprised me.
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The majority of real estate websites showed fewer homes than the MLS. This is understandable as some homes may simply not have made it over to the site, plus consumers and Realtors have the ability to block listings from these sites.
The other shocking thing was that a few sites had far more than what’s available in the MLS. I’m guessing this is a result of homes that have sold, cancelled or expired and were never removed from these sites.
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Moral of the story… If you’re seriously looking for a new home, please contact a Realtor that can provide the most accurate up-to-date list of homes. Realtors also have the ability to perform a much more detailed search than these other sites.
With the plethora of information out there for potential home buyers, Realtors can help you wade through and make sense of it all. Don’t get information overload, call a Realtor.
