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Realtor Data vs Consumer Real Estate Data
If you've ever seriously shopped for a home online, you've probably had some frustration with the search process. For example, it can be very difficult to find out how long a house has been on the market, what the original listing price was, or when the property was repriced.
As someone who works for a company that builds real estate websites, I'd like to point out that the bottleneck is not a technology issue.
Teresa Boardman offers some insight into what data she, as a Realtor, can see in her local MLS system that generally isn't accessible on consumer websites:
Listing, and Re-listing
The MLS, or RMLS that we use here in Minnesota tracks CDM, or cumulative days on market for all homes. Unfortunatly the CDM is not available to the general public, but then neither is DOM, or "days on market". For buyers I say if you want to know how many times a home has been on the market in the past year and at what prices then please call a Realtor, if you are working directly with the seller, ask the seller.
This is such a strange situation. Personally, I find value in working with real estate agents due to their knowledge of the real estate transaction process, home evaluations, and appraisal skills. I feel like I'm wasting their time and my own if I have to ask them to look up data points like days on market for me.
What's even stranger is that most consumers don't know what data Realtors have access to beyond what's found on public real estate websites. I'm sure most consumers believe their seeing the entire MLS when they're surfing their local agent or broker's site. If that's the case, Realtors are doing a poor job marketing the fact that they are gatekeepers to valuable data.
What's your take? Do Realtors benefit from withholding listing data from public websites?
Update: Glenn Roberts has a related post on the Inman blog about who has a right to use the term MLS in their domain names.
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2. Posted by: Teresa Boardman on February 27, 2008 3:58 PM:
Ed - consumers are not seeing the MLS at all. What they are seeing is a feed that goes to various sites from the MLS. There is a company called MLSONLINE, often consumer beleive that it is the MLS, it is not. I will write a post about what data is in an MLS listing. I never really thought about it but consumers don't know what information is available. They also ask questions that we can not answer and don't know the answers to. Like why are they moving? How many people lived here? They ask "what did they pay for it" in cases where the home was purchased a decade ago. While inside the home they point to pictures on the wall and ask if those are the people who live in the home and they point to various features and ask why the seller put that there or why they built it. :)
3. Posted by: Ed Kohler on February 27, 2008 5:10 PM:
Teresa, looking forward to your post, and funny stuff about the quirkiness of buyers.
PXLated, it's still a very fractured industry.
4. Posted by: Craig Davidenko on February 27, 2008 7:38 PM:
Denial, some people think that certain things last forever.however those people eventually learn the plain and simple truth.many many years ago the dinosaurs romed the earth alongside real estate brokers and agents who held the “holy grail”..”the mls book” but then came along came the world wide web.dinosaurs extinct and brokers and agents wondering when people would notice that they in fact did not hold the “mls” anymore.
THE FUTURE OF REAL ESTATE IS HERE AND COMING TO A TOWN NEAR YOU!
Craig Davidenko
912.398.7245
flatraterealestate.com
5. Posted by: Paul Guinnessy on February 27, 2008 8:16 PM:
I found our last house on craiglist, and if we hadn't needed the realtor to let us into the place, I think I would have done without or insisted on a more reasonable commission. 6% is way too much nowadays considering that most of us do most of the work of finding a house. Plus the realtor and owner of the house we bought must have been a bit unethical, as they didn't disclosure that there had been major repair work to the sewer line. Unethical because we had sewage pouring into the basement 3 days after closing. So remind me again what good they are?
6. Posted by: Corey Donovan on February 28, 2008 10:24 AM:
Ed, I think sometimes the realtors don't benefit because certain buyers turn to sites like Craigslist for their browsing.
For example, when I bought my last house, the main thing I wanted was a home on or near a park and my dream feature was for it to have a basketball court or sport court. I couldn't search any of the main realtor sites for that kind of info so I primarily searched Craigslist listings for terms like "park-side" or "playground" or "sport court" along with a regional modifier of some kind.
7. Posted by: MLS Listings Toronto on February 29, 2008 7:32 AM:
I do not think that realtors benefit from withholding listing data form websites. I work for a realtor in Canada and I do not think that it is difficult to look up the houses online. There are many places where one can search - such as Craigslist listing and many others. Many of real estate agents have this information on their sites. Let's say that you're looking for a house in Toronto...do some googling and you'll find many sites with lists (e.g. Toronto MLS ). Not that difficult.
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1. Posted by: PXLated on February 27, 2008 3:44 PM:
I'm not sure if they "really" benefit but they seem to think they do. They have always promoted their MLS data as their key to relevancy. Back in the mid-90s I worked on the first, large-scale, publicly available, real estate site - Cyberhomes. To get listings, Moore Data had to negotiate with each and every MLS association/owner and they were very protective of that data. At the time, not many realtors were wild about listings being online, listing agents were more acceptable it seemed, selling agents not so much. Now, I think they have accepted that fact but are still not wild about it and are still very protective and holding onto whatever info they can. Most see that data as the key to their livelihood rather than just good customer service.
Just my 2 cents :-)