“Welcome to our website! Can we help you find a home?” This is the message that you can easily find on dozens of home search websites around the web. We live in a period where people go to the internet for just about anything. “Looking for a place to eat? Search for a nearby restaurant. What’s the weather like? I don’t know I’ll check my app.” We get it. It’s easier.
As real estate professionals, we utilize mobile apps and the internet for our business day in and day out. The problem is that it’s far too easy to put something on the internet with less than accurate information. Just look at Wikipedia. Anyone can add content to their website. In fact, back in 2009 NBC News reported that a Dublin University student added a poetic, yet fake quote to the Wikipedia page of French composer Maurice Jarre just a few hours after Jarre had passed away. Dozens of U.S. blogs and websites from around the world used the quote in their editorial pieces and were shocked to find out that the quote hadn’t in fact ever come out of the mouth of Maurice Jarre.
We, as real estate professionals, see similar issues happening for buyers and sellers. When looking to buy a home, it is incredibly convenient to buyers to browse homes in their area using popular real estate websites including Trulia, Zillow, and Realtor.com, to name a few. The problem is with the accuracy that some of these sites have…or do not have. On any given day, one of the 10 realtors on our team will take a call from a buyer who wants to see a home. The problem is the home is no longer for sale! It has received an offer days before and the home search website has yet to update it. This is incredibly frustrating, given the market we are in right now.
These home search websites are a hindrance to our sellers too. To break down part of the listing process for you, a real estate agent who is a member of the MIBOR Realtor Association will place a listing up for sale in the BLC Listing Service. Other home sites use a feed that allows those listings to appear on their sites as well. There is inevitably always a delay any time a change is made in MIBOR, thus affecting how long it takes to get to the other sites. This delay often includes what the asking price of the home is, what the current status of the home is, and sometimes even the characteristics of the home.
From a seller’s point of view this is very troubling. Some of these sites go as far as to offer estimates on the home’s current worth with very little research to back it up. These sites can also include characteristics of the home that are completely wrong. We have even found that the listing agent who is working with the seller of a home doesn’t always have access to edit some of the information, limiting us in our ability to properly serve a client.
At The Indy Property Source, we pride ourselves in getting the job done efficiently, but also accurately. We don’t take short cuts. We have made a point to provide the most complete and accurate information to both our buyers and sellers. By choosing to work with one of our trusted professionals, you can be confident that you have an ally on your side in your home buying or selling process. We only use data we know is accurate. We set up searches using our BLC Listing Service, so that you can be sure that any new listings that are sent your way as a buyer are currently active and reflect the correct data. For our sellers, we will work hard to make sure that the data attached to your home is as accurate as we can make it.
We are actively communicating with many of these home search websites to ensure that they cannot display information that is not up to date.
If you are considering buying or selling a home in the future, please contact The Indy Property Source at 317-886-8477 or email us at info@indypropertysource.com, so we can set you up with a trusted real estate agent whose reputation speaks for itself.
