The Perils of Online Home Searches

Considering Buying? Click here to search all available homes in your area 

Considering Selling? Get a Free Home Evaluation

You may also call me at 562-900-9430 for a FREE home buying or selling consultation to answer any of your real estate questions.

Hey everyone, today I am going to discuss the hazards of online home searches and home evaluation websites. As you will see, there are a lot of inaccuracies in them that can be solved by looking elsewhere.

The top real estate sites in the country like Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com play an important role in our industry. On one hand, they are a good source of local real estate trends. On the other hand, they aren't so good at providing accurate value estimates or information about homes for sale. Why aren't they as accurate as some other sites?

For starters, they gather data from tax records, which is not always accurate in terms of providing fair market information. For example, if somebody sold their home to a family member or relative, they may sell for less than market value on purpose. However, this value will skew the home's value.

Another technique these sites employ is an algorithm to determine your home's value. This algorithm is only taking into consideration public information from public records - things like bedroom count, bathroom count, and square footage. The problem is they are not taking anything from inside the home into account. You may have made some great improvements to your home, which increased its value, but that won't show on these sites. This could lead to your home being undervalued by as much as 25%.

If you are looking to buy a home, you need to know the home listings online are typically delayed anywhere from 1-5 days. What often happens is that by the time a home is listed for sale, every agent and every buyer working with an agent is already aware of this property. If you are in a hot market, it has probably already been sold.
 
If you want to have access to homes the instant they go on the market, the only way to do that is by working with a real estate professional, like myself, who can get you access to the MLS.

If you have any questions for me, feel free to give me a call or send me an email. I look forward to talking with you soon!