Good question and one that
has, depending on who you ask, fingers pointing in every direction!
The advent of such sites as Zillow and Trulia (the 2 best known but
not the only 2 search sites for real estate) has been the development
of local MLS (Multiple Listing services).
These services act as the
bulletin board for realtors to post (list) their listings and leases
in a given market area. These listing are pretty complete and comes
with a set of rules the users need to follow in order to use the
service. Like reporting all price changes, changes of status and sold
information once a transaction if closed. There are usually fines
associated with violations of these things and the separate entities
do best to police themselves and their members. Accuracy is probably
95%
At some point in town these
3rd party sites , Such as Zillow/Trulia, came into being
and the MLS's communities saw this as an opportunity to broadcast
their members information onto a wider national platform. I most
cases costs of sharing the information was minimal because there
platforms do not typically charge to list the properties.
How can they do that?
Because they do charge advertisers that are attracted by volume of
visitors to their site. So for these companies the more listings they
have the larger number of audience they attract. They also can tap
the Realtor® market by selling
placement services on each property landing page. Ever see the
“Neighborhood expert” spot? Well I can tell you from experience
they are not experts in the neighborhood they appear next to. They
have just paid to be placed there as the expert..Never mind going
down that path but it is a little misleading to say the least..
So
now you have all of this information posted on sites not under the
same guidelines as the original host site. Some of these sites data
fields don’t match up the same, sometimes the data is corrupted,
sometimes the changes to status and price to not make it to the 3rd
party site, some times the changes make it but the site reads it as a
duplicate and does not publish the changes. I ave hear a lot of
excuses from various 3rd
party sites over the years.
These
sites have different ways of advising the public on what estimates
are for home values although usually those values have noting to do
with market activity in a given market place more to do with public
tax evaluations and other public information. In Texas sale
information is not made public, the 3rd
parties respond well if you want more accurate information to be
given by us release the sold information to us. By law it just does
not work that way so they go ahead and publish information that is
inaccurate and helps create this market confusion over prices.
It
is a nasty spiral and one that is about to change. A lot of MLS's
around the country are not sending the information to these 3rd
party companies anymore. This will leave them looking for other ways
to generate traffic to their sites. In that past they have down
played the accuracy of the information saying it is not our data we
just show what is given to us. Being a realtor and have data
misrepresented on these sites and trying to get the information
changed is not an easy task.
I actually had one client
call and started crying on the phone that she had just gone on and
done an estimate on one of the 2 biggest sites and they told her she
had lost value in her home over a 4 year period and lost all of her
equity. I of course panicked because I knew that was not even
remotely possible because of the property she purchased. The comps
showed her not only was her equity protected but she had actually
realized a a nice appreciation. We sold her home and she now does not
visit those sites anymore.
So there are many reasons
the data may be different. The feed with the updates not working,
service agreement that bought original data to the 3rd
party site is out of contract and they just not updating stale info.
Duplicate listings from different sources some being updated some not
being updated. Agent has not updated the info on the original MLS
site.
The best solution would be to contact the listing agent (If you can find their name since even that information is blocked by 3rd parties sometimes so they direct you to a paying advertising agent) and ask what the status is. Anytime you are looking at real estate it is a good idea to verify all information before you act.
Hope this helps.
Please feel free to visit: http://www.austinhomelistings.com/agents/robert-kenney/
For real estate information
in the Austin and surrounding areas.
Regards
Bob Kenney, Realtor®
Mobile/Text: 512-922-4922
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