Achilles’ Heel of Real Estate Listing Sites: Accuracy

This listing agent complained that her MLS listings, with recent price reductions, were not updated on a third party real estate listing site.

This last point, regarding accurate information, is where we experience the biggest problems; not because of the service WE as REALTORS® provide, but because of the many other sites that are picking up the listings that our sellers have entrusted to us. By all means, we want our listings in front of potential buyers! But it has to be accurate! And unfortunately, we have little or no control over the content that is displayed on other sites. Source.

Reliability is a common problem and these third party sites simply cannot assure consumers of the accuracy of listing information on the site, often because of feeds that are not updated. This is extremely frustrating to listing agents, home owners, and BUYERS.

Inaccuracy of listings on real estate listing sites is the Achilles’ heel which could lead to their demise. Herein lies the MLSs’ opportunity to get in the game and dominate. But will they?

Other than accuracy, what other problems do agents, sellers and buyers experience on national real estate websites?

{Original image: Dying Achilles (Veyrier 1683)}

Technorati Tags: real estate marketing, real estate listing websites, mls

Brett

Brett Shaw from Cyberhomes:

Some of these sites, like ours, allows visitors to edit information about the house, but I see the problem with price reductions. I agree with Jo here in that you can write a complaint to the web site. Eventually, the price will change (if changed in the MLS) but there will probably be some sort of delay.

jfsellsius

Thanks Brett.
Just curious-- if a website gets multiple feeds from different syndicators,
which listing makes it to the site? Is there a hierarchy of some sort?

First Home Buyer

I am looking to buy and I find that oftern the listings just don't have updated information, including photographs. It's now summer here in New England and one of my pet peeves is seeing listings that include a photograph of a home that was taken during the winter. Gosh. It's irritating. Update the pictures sooner along with all the other information that is currently out of date.

jfsellsius

Thanks so much for your input First Home Buyer. It is refreshing to see
consumers (buyers and sellers) comment so professionals get to know what's
on your mind, what you like and what bugs you.

Katherine Foster

I just had this happen with a seller. I am a real estate agent and last week I had a seller contact me who was upset b/c her information was not correct on zillow.com, trukia.com, yahoo.com, vast.com, and even on google.com. The price was not correct to reflect the reduction on any of these sites. The problem is, I didn't put this information on these sites and have no way of changing it. What do you do??