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Favorite way to find listings
Hi Everyone!
We have been using Zillow pre-realtor days mostly to look for listings because we like the map tool, and location is a big thing for us. However, sometimes we do feel like we might miss something or an open house with the app. We've had a realtor set up a profile for us, and it had over 300 houses to weed through, and we're finding more and more houses on the market (which is definitely a good thing). But we're getting a tad overwhelmed. I'm not crazy about this realtor list because it's really hard to sort and it's taking forever to go through things..... So in short, what tools did you use to find the best listings? Did you rely mostly on your realtor? Did you use a lot of different realty websites, did you stick to the realtors site or did you have a favorite website? Thanks!
Re: Favorite way to find listings
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I like Realtor.com because it is directly linked to the MLS and updates the fastest. Once you weed through the initial listings you can save a search that will only show you new listings and or price reductions.
I also like sawbuck.com because it shows price history and when reductions were taken.
We didn't rely on our agent for info that we could find ourselves. I usually knew about new listings before she did since I monitored for new ones all day. Our market is fast and if something good went up in our price range it was snapped up in a week. Our agent focused on finding exclusive listings and things that hadn't come on the market yet, but were going to. She also reached out to her contacts about coming price reductions.
We found that zillow and trulia tended to be a bit out of date (things didn't get added right away or stuck around after taken off the market). In our area there are a few large realty companies. I tried using the website of our realtor's company but it just wasn't very user friendly so we ended up using the other company's site to search for homes and send us alerts when something came up that met our criteria. I think the best thing to do is browse around the sites of the different companies that operate in your area and see whose site works best for your needs.
Open houses were always a pain because they were rarely accurate on trulia/zillow and each realty company only listed their own so it took some digging through multiple sites to find all the possible open houses we wanted to go to.
Aside from the list that I get every morning in my email from our realtor, I use a site called moveinmichigan.com. This allows me to pull every MLS listing in Michigan. Check and see if there is a similar site for your area. I also cross check with Realtor.com, which sometimes has other pictures, but has a Bing.com map in it (love the Bird's Eye view!) along with a status of the listing. I hardly ever search on Trulia or Zillow because they are out of date, however I do use them to see sales history (while not always accurate either) when I do find something I am interested in.
Like pp said, Zillow and Trulia aren't good for finding listings because they're slow to pick up new ones and slow to drop old ones. Zestimates are also ridiculously inaccurate. In short, the only thing those sites are good for is to see closed sales prices.
I google to find the best website from a local agent. Rarely does that website belong to the agent I'm working with. Just check out some of the main real estate companies' websites in your area til you find a good search engine. The map feature is pretty standard on the websites of good RE companies.
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Our realtor set us up with Listingbook, which for us locally is the more up-to-date place to find listings. Zillow and other sites include a lot of outdated listings, don't differentiate between those that are active vs. under contract plus new listings didn't show up right away. It took us awhile to figure out how to edit all the various filters on that site, since we'd been used to the more user-friendly features on Zillow. Ask your realtor about the search tool they set you up with - I'm sure there are filters somewhere you can set up.
GL!
Thanks! Looks like Redfin is in my market, so I'm gonna check that out now!
My husband loves zillow because he loves the app for his ipad, but that's good to know that it's not as accurate as other tools. Thanks!
if you're in the New England area, I liked www.nemoves.com