Searching for homes online is not only the #1 way home buyers look today, it’s also a lot like deep sea fishing. 

Make sure your time spent looking for homes is the most effective.  Arming yourself with a little knowledge and the right tools will better help you navigate through the sea of homes and waves of miss-guided information that will no doubt make you sea sick.  Imagine how much time you could save if you simply knew the best place to fish for what YOU’RE looking for.  Where every time you cast out a search for homes, it returned reliable, related, real-time results.  Allowing you the ability to see more of the details that are important to you, save the ones you want and receive automatic updates you can’t afford to miss.   

According to the 2009 home buyer and seller profile report released by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) the number of home buyers who start their home search online has increased to 90% (compared to 2% just 10 years ago), verifying that Multiple Listing Service (MLS) internet sites are the most popular source!   In this post, we aim to better help you understand what to look for when finding the best places to search for homes online!  

When you think about how much information globally is being indexed to the web every second, it can be overwhelming.  And when it comes to the amount of real estate content that’s out there, sifting and searching for homes online has been said to be a “wild-wild-west” experience among other things.   As the saying goes, “don’t believe everything you hear”  the same goes with “just because it’s on the internet doesn’t make it true.”  Real estate regulations differ from state-to-state and regulations governing internet websites are few-and-far-between right now.  To each their own, there are many places online that offer various MLS solutions to search for homes - but they’re not all alike. 

Here’s a few reasons we found do a good job explaining why…

• The home has sold.
  Whether it just sold or could have sold years ago, often times it still shows up online because the agent never removed it or the syndicate site isn’t up-to-date.  I’ve personally talked in depth about this with a Zillow rep and have seen the same issues on Trulia and a number of other sites too. 

• The home is not actually for sale.
  There are places known as link farms who sometimes collect sold listings or even rentals to generate traffic to the site, but these homes may not actually be available or even on the market.  There’s even agent sites and blogs that attempt a similar strategy for lead capture.    We believe in sharing content with integrity and referrals thanks.

• The home is a short sale, bank owned property or simply does NOT fit your criteria 
  Public property detail pages don’t usually provide listing terms or restrictions that may apply.  A seller may disclose accepted offers are subject to them identifying a suitable replacement property – data typically exclusive to the “Agent Remarks” section of the MLS listing.  Also,  there are web sites out there across the nation that list homes for sale that include, but don’t disclose properties which are short sale, REO, foreclosure or bank owned.  If you have to close on a home in say 45 days, these types of properties may not be the best fit for you.  This is a great example why you want to pick up the phone and call your agent the minute you find a home online you’re interested in.  There likely will be  important history associated to the property in question that you may otherwise not know until you already have an emotional investment.

• The information about the home or area is incorrect.
  This may include but is not limited to incorrect details or lack of pricing updates, schools, property description, neighborhood, number of rooms, stories, baths, attached or detached dwelling, lot size, etc.  Likely such a mistake is due to human error.  Garbage in, garbage out as my real estate SEO coach likes to put it.  If an agent makes a mistake about the school when loading the listing into RMLS  for instance, it will remain wrong until they fix it.  But using a Realtor who specializes in the area and homes in it will weed through all the garbage for you.  The quality of the site used is another issue.  Some web sites that offer MLS data exchange services that don’t update as often, utalize less superior solutions or both may show you old data compared sites that are better and offer more frequent listing updates.  Those are the ones you want to use.

What it boils down to is this…  Searching for homes online isn’t as easy as it may sound, but we’ve made it easy to search and find Oregon real estate.  While we can’t ignore that searching for homes online is the #1 way to search, we can better control the content we at Gardner Team Real Estate provide to consumers who value trusted resources and localized information delivered by real estate experts.   

Savvy home buyers don’t search all over the place, just in the right place.  Each day more and more people are calling  www.SherwoodHomes.com their HOME to search and find ALL homes, land, lifestyle real estate with important hyper-local content surrounding the Sherwood area.  If you’re looking to relocate within or to the State of Oregon, try using the resources offered at www.SherwoodHomes.com from your computer or mobile device and discover why so many others are making the switch.  We think you “Sherwood” love it too!