With thousands of Real Estate websites, finding the right one can be a challenge. Do a Google search and you’ll find the most popular real estate websites like Zillow, Trulia, and Refine. Once you get past the first page, even the less popular sites now have the same home search features. So how does a home owner or buyer know which is the best site? Before you choose, you first need to understand a little more about how they all started and what they really are.

For many years, if you were in the market to buy a home, you had to go to the local Real Estate office in the area you wanted to buy a home in and ask to see a list of homes for sale. This listing was a printout of the local multiple listing service (MLS) homes for sale. The listing gave him basic information about the houses and some marketing comments. She scanned it and then asked an agent to show her the houses he thought she might like.

This was great for real estate agents because as ports for this information, buyers had to go to them. It also gave the agent the opportunity to show the houses that the agent himself was listing first. For the buyer this was not so good. It was difficult for the buyer to know if the agent was there to represent him or the seller and if he wanted to see houses in more than one city, he might have to go to other real estate offices to see the listing on other MLS. These listings could also be out of date and by the time you have found your dream home, it may already be sold. This process can be time consuming and stressful for even the most experienced buyer.

Fast forward a decade or two and some major changes have taken place. MLS went digital and consolidated into larger MLS companies covering even larger areas. Here in Western Washington we now use the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS) and it covers all but two counties; Clark and Clalam. In the 1990s, the Internet brought the first Real Estate websites. Most of these displayed the homes listed by the agents/agencies that own the website and were not updated very often. Some of the larger real estate agencies, the ones with the money and the resources, began creating home search tools using data directly from the MLS. Now, for the first time, buyers don’t have to talk to an agent to find homes for sale and can get even more information (photos, schools, map locations, and up-to-date status).

Today, the price of producing these high-quality websites has dropped to the point where the average agent with the right skills can create their own. Now we see an explosion of Real Estate websites and it seems that most of them have home search functions. This leaves buyers confused as to which website to use.

Now that buyers can get information from almost any real estate website, what should they know before choosing one? First, here in Washington State, any licensed agent can show and represent you on any home listed on the MLS, no matter what website you find it on. Most of these websites have a mobile app or are mobile friendly. While most buyers start their home search online, what they don’t understand is that the website they use to search for homes is a lead generation tool for the agent. The buyer is exchanging their contact information for the use of the website.

This is not a bad thing. If you really want to buy a home, you’ll need answers to your questions, help finding financing, an agent to open doors for you, someone who understands the paperwork and can help you with negotiations, and a trusted agent to take care of you. in the closing process. That can only happen when you talk to an agent. Which agent you get is the important part. And that’s where finding the right website comes into play. The buyer should use these websites to learn more about the agent they might want to represent them. Finding out more about the agent before engaging with an agent is the key to achieving your home buying or selling goals.

What you should be looking for is what the real estate agent’s experience is. Do you work full time as a licensed real estate agent? What is your closing success rate? Do you guarantee your services? What do past clients have to say about the agent’s service? These questions can sometimes be found on the agent’s website, but if not, you should ask on first contact with an agent. Now that you know how they started and what they are, how do you choose the right website for you? First, let’s talk about the differences in these websites. We can divide it into four types.

The first type is the big non-brokerage sites like Zillow, Homes.com, Realtor.com, and Trulia. These sites do not have agents working in the field. What they do is sell the leads that sign up on their site to agents who hope to convert the lead into a customer. These websites have worked hard to make sure home buyers find their site first. They have added a lot of great home estimating tools or mortgage calculators and all the information you can get on almost every home in the US and a few other countries. They get most of this information from the public record and from what some homeowners can give them. The downside to these sites is that the information they use may be out of date or inaccurate. Take home values, for example, because they get their sold data (what prices homes in the same neighborhood sold for) from public records, not the local MLS, their numbers may be behind market trends. In the world of Real Estate, we only look back at the last six months to help us determine a home’s value. While the sale price of a home may go on the public record right at closing, it can take months to filter through the system before these websites can include it in their data, and that will throw off their numbers. There is also a question about friendly houses. When a real estate agent or appraiser does a Comparable Market Analysis (CMA) of a home’s value, they look for homes like the subject home (the home being appraised) of the same size, same bedrooms, same bathrooms, property of the same size, same neighborhood and same state. This can be a bit of an art and the question is: can a computer do as good a job as an agent? This can leave home buyers and sellers confused about the true value of a home.

I would like to take this opportunity to comment on home values. In a free market, such as ours here in the US, the true value of a home is exactly “the highest price a buyer is willing to pay and the minimum amount a seller is willing to accept” for any property. Only when a property is sold can the true market price be established and everyone else, real estate agents, appraisers, county appraisers and any website, just make an estimate or guess.

The second type of Real Estate websites are the large and medium-sized brokerages such as Re/Max, Windermere, Coldwell Banker, Century 21, RedFin, and ZipRealty. These companies have multiple brokerage offices in many locations across the US These Real Estate companies have agents who work directly for the brokerage firms, often as independent contractors. Leads or leads that sign up on their sites are assigned to the individual agent or sometimes sold based on companies policies. These companies take a large part of the agent’s commission or payment, with some of them taking 60% or more. This means that the agent has to work extra hard to convert as many leads as possible into customers just to make enough money to stay in business. Sometimes these agents take on more than they can reasonably handle, resulting in poor customer service or a higher transaction failure rate. Some of these companies give a refund to the buyer. This refund comes out of the agent’s commission and can make it even more difficult for agents to provide good service to their clients. I have heard many complaints about agents disappearing once a contract is signed or agents refusing to show homes to buyers looking for homes on the lower end of the market and still wanting to write the contract and get paid. commission.

The third type of Real Estate website is the small or independent brokerage firm. These companies are usually owned and operated by experienced agents who have the skill and knowledge to create a good quality website and provide good service to buyers and sellers alike. You’ll find the same home search tools and email notifications as on the larger sites, and because these sites serve local communities, these sites often have more information about the areas they serve and consumers can read more about the agents they may want to use. when buying or selling their homes. These businesses may have one or more agents who work together as a team or as independent agents and typically have a higher successful closing rate. What makes these sites the best choice for home buyers or sellers are the agents that accompany them.

The fourth type of Real Estate website is the independent agent website. These websites are created by the individual agent or by a third party on behalf of the agent. They can be as good as any of the larger commercial sites, depending on the skill, time, and money an agent is willing to invest. These agents can be very good agents, but most of them are public resumes of little more than one page posted by agents in the hope of attracting buyers or sellers to the agent they are promoting.

So when considering a real estate website, buyers and sellers should keep in mind that a website will not help you buy or sell your home, it is the real estate agent. The website is one way to find the right agent to do the job. Think of it this way, since you can get home information from almost any website, what value do you get from a website? The value is in the service you receive from an agent that can save you time, money, and the heartache of poor treatment or poor service.