April 19th, 2012 4:20 PM by Gregg Mower
I am not sure how many of you out there have ever been online to search for Real Estate but the world has changed. A little know company called Zillow used to be driven by the local Multiple listing services (MLS) and today in some parts of the country it might still be but in others it is not. So if you are trying to get an estimate of the value of your home Zillow may not be the best place anymore. I know in Northern California they don’t pick up all the listings, some agents are having to enter them in manually. Some agents don’t even realize this so the inventory is not accurately depicted on Zillow or other search engines. I can only guess it is a money thing as it costs to host an IDX powered web site from each MLS across the country. Others such as Redfin, Tulia, and the hottest new comer to the Northern California market www.CribClick.Com uses the local MLS to drive its search engines. In Fact, at CribClick.com you can customize your searches and become notified when new listings hit the market so you can first at getting your hands on the really good deals.
Online Real Estate, with $4.00-$5.00 a gallon gasoline, is becoming the intelligent way to shop. The way it works is you figure out where you want to buy and enter your criteria into the search engine and boom! All the houses in the MLS show up just like it would for a Real Estate Agent. You can get as detailed as you wish down to the number of bedroom and bathrooms, to granite in the kitchen. This is truly the new way of starting your search instead of having an agent do this and then put you in his or her car and drive you all over looking at homes you would have eliminated if you did your own search criteria. You will get to see all the pictures of the home as well as detailed descriptions of all the amenities all right on your computer screen. You can even explore areas that you originally did not think you wanted to move to. You also can do the research on the schools, crime statistics, number of other houses for sale in that area as well as how many foreclosures may be in that area, all kinds of details that sometimes your agent is not allowed to tell you. Try CribClick.com it is a well thought out site you won’t be called by 10 different real estate professionals the site is a service and if you do want to see one of the homes the site can direct you to a showing agent at no cost you, how cool is that. Investors love the site as they can put in specific criteria of the house or houses they are looking for and the system will keep them updated 24 hours a day 7 days a week so they can jump on the deal when it first hits the market, just as fast as an agent would be able to or faster as it shows up in your email and you make the decision to see it or not, no pressure. This is truly the future of Real Estate sales.
As usual any comments or remarks are appreciated.