Real Estate Round-Up: Not all websites are created equal

Thinking about moving? Where to begin? People move for various reasons – to be closer to their children, for a job transfer or new opportunity, or sometimes just because they want something new. Once someone has figured out where they're going, chances are they're going to do some searching on the web, and things can become interesting.

When a real estate agent lists a property for sale, their broker agrees to distribute that listing information from the multiple listing server to syndicated sites like Zillow.com, Homes.com, Trulia.com and other individual real estate agent or broker sites. Every broker gets to choose the sites that they want their listing to appear on. Some of these sites have agreements with other sites with whom they in turn will distribute the data. Therefore, not all the sites get a "direct feed" from the original data. See where I'm going with this? Not all sites are created equal. Let me explain further.

When searching from a broker or real estate agent site, the data will come directly from the MLS, so it will be as accurate as the most recent input. Think of the MLS as a kind of distribution center, with the broker or Realtor as the author of that data, and the syndicated sites as the outlets for that data.

When shopping at a Target store, the items for sale in the store or outlet is the same as when it left the distribution center. But, in this case, both the distribution center and the outlet have the same owner with the same rules and guidelines for quality control. With syndicated real estate sites, that's not the case. No one single entity "owns" the distribution center – the MLS – or all the various outlets, so data is updated depending on each outlet's guidelines. It explains why people can search some syndicated sites and find more available listings for sale than on others.

The thing is, many of these so called "active" listings are not active any longer. The syndicated sites reflect more inventory to capture "users" for the agents who pay them to advertise on that site. Tricky, eh? The syndicated sites are not trying to help buyers find their next home, they are making sure that the agents who are paying them handsomely get lots and lots of leads.

I'll give an example of why this matters. We had a client moving to Fallbrook. They would contact the office with lists of homes they wanted to see. We would go on the MLS and look for their choices but would only find 50 percent of what they wanted to see. When we dug deeper, we discovered that the homes that we could not find for sale were generally sold – and not just sold last week, but sometimes up to six months ago. We referred the client to the agency's site, which is a direct feed from the MLS. Frustration set in because they couldn't find many homes that they liked, but what they were looking at was at least accurate data.

The same thing happens if someone is thinking about selling their home and they want to do some searching to prepare for what their home is worth. If the information they see is not accurate, it doesn't matter how much of it there is, it is still bad. Think garbage in, garbage out.

So, what's the advice here? Buyers and sellers can use whatever sites they want but should go into it with their eyes open, because not all sites are created equal.

Kim Murphy can be reached at [email protected] or (760) 415-9292 or at 130 N. Main Avenue in Fallbrook. Her broker license is #01229921, and she is on the board of directors for the California Association of Realtors.