The National Association of Realtors 2011 Buyer and Seller Profile report has some interesting data, but really not that surprising when I compare that data to what I see in the field every day. The reports stated:
eighty-eight percent of home buyers used the internet as one of the information sources in their home search process…
the second most used information source was the real estate agent. eighty-seven percent of buyers used real estate agents during their home search process…
the internet and real estate agents have remained the two highest-ranking sources by usefulness consistently for several years,
The National Association spends significant time and money on this research and if you have been looking for homes online, you will probably have a few stories to tell about the process.
The State of California is a very pro-consumer protection state. The Department of real estate and the requirement of a sales license is a pro consumer protection device. The licensing requirements in the state of California set the expectation as to how real estate can be transacted. Each individual listing contract is a private employment contract between the home seller and the real estate broker. Real estate brokers created the multiple listing service to pool their private employment contracts together under a universal compensation agreement. Essentially, this means that the various brokers will agree to compensate each other, if they sell each other’s listings.
Prior to the Internet, home buyers were only able to get information about the properties for sale in a given market by directly contacting a real estate agent. Today, during the internet age, home buyers have the ability to go online and search for homes at any time of the day or night.
What is unknown or often misunderstood is that very few websites have a complete inventory of homes are for sale on the market. Sites such as Trulia and Zillow offer information about properties for sale, but because there are not brokers, these have very limited access to the properties for sale in any given market. They rely on brokers supplying information about homes brokers have for sale. Unfortunately for Trulia and Zillow, not all brokers provide their inventories. Additionally as homes are sold or entered escrow, many times the information is not reported to Trulia and Zillow, so the information listed on those sites could overstate or understate the actual available inventory.
So where’s the best place for home buyer to look for property on the Internet? Well if you look at the results of the report I quoted above, the real estate agent plays a very important part in filling in the gaps of what’s available online.
From personal experience, many, many, many times buyers have come to me with a list of homes they have found on the Internet and 90% of those homes are already under contract in escrow. As a member of the multiple listing service, I have access to the real-time data reporting of the current inventory. While the property searches on real estate agent websites are coming from a more direct feed of the listing data, those sites can only provide limited data.
Don’t feel like you are coming up empty handed. If you understand the property search sites are limited in scope and that the pro-consumer protection posture of the state of California wants home buyers and home sellers to interact with licensed real estate agents, you can use the information online conjunction with licensed real estate agent and find a home for you.
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