Monday’s Wall Street Journal included an article, “How to Sell a House When You Have to Sell it Now“, by David Crook. Mr. Crook is the author of “The Wall Street Journal Complete Real-Estate Investing Guidebook”.
In the article Mr. Crook tells home sellers to list their homes on leading real estate websites which include Trulia, Zillow, Cyberhomes, Eppraisal and Realtor.com. If these are good places to advertise a home for sale, shouldn’t they be good places to search for a home for sale?
Yesterday I did a test to see how good these sites are for searching for homes for sale. In the Chicago area’s multiple listing system, I found 13 houses for sale in Evanston priced between $400K and $500K with at least 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Here’s what I found for the same search on these national real estate websites:
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Trulia.com – Only 9 of the 13 listed homes were returned. In addition, it returned 3 multi-family homes and one house under contract since July 8th.
Zillow.com – Only 6 of the 13 listed homes were returned. In addition, 2 multi-family properties and 14 houses in Skokie came back in the search results!
Cyberhomes.com – Only 2 of the 13 listed homes were returned.
Eppraisal.com – This site doesn’t even offer searches for homes for sale. It provides data on past sales.
Realtor.com – Of the 5 national real estate websites, Realtor.com provided the best results with 12 of the 13 listed homes. Yet, it still was missing 1 listed home which has been on the market for a few weeks now. It also displayed a few listings that were under contract.
I decided it was only fair to give my broker’s site, BairdWarner.com, the same test. It returned all 13 listed homes. It also returned 4 homes temporarily off market.
Trulia, Zillow, Cyberhomes and Eppraisal may have some good information for home buyers, but they aren’t great places to search for a home for sale. Thus, I also think there are better places to advertize a home for sale. Realtor.com is definitely the best national site to search on, but I often have clients send me listings from Realtor.com that are under contract or have even sold. If you want access to all homes for sale listed in the Chicago Metro Area, use BairdWarner.com.
UPDATE 7/18/08: For those of you who found this post via the Chicago Sun-Times article, “This site tops for search results”, please read my response post, “SunTimes.com & ChicagoTribune.com Join Real Estate Search Test” for my SunTimes.com and ChicagoTribune.com test results.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fran Bailey shows, previews and tracks downtown Chicago homes for sale giving her the insights needed to help her clients negotiate the best price and terms. Fran has been quoted in numerous Chicago and national publications. To schedule showings of listings regardless of broker or to contact Fran email her at fran.bailey@bairdwarner.com or call 773.793.4516. Learn More
Fran Bailey, Realtor
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
It all depends on the market you are looking at. In Southern California — Orange and San Diego Counties — the MLS places 100% of all their listings on Cyberhomes on behalf of the broker and it is updated every day so you have current informaiton. The great thing about looking at the listings is that you have all the home value, neighborhood, demographic and comparable sales statistics on one easy to navigate site. Make it a profitable day, Scott Hoen
Very good, and correct. The information, like the Zestimates, is even incorrect in many cases. If a buyer wants valid, up-to-date info, go to a local realtor site.
Fran,
I have often compared Realtor.com and bairdwarner.com and BW always comes out on top. PLUS it gives you way more info on a property – details on property taxes, for instance. Definitely the way to go!
Diane
Hey Fran, Sara from Zillow here.
There are currently approximately 4.2 million active listings nationwide represented by agents, plus another large chunk of For By Owner listings. We just started getting listings on the site less than a year ago, and so far have about 2.8 million. That said, there are definitely still growth opportunities for Zillow in the listings space.
However, we do have data on about 80 million US homes, regardless of if they are for sale or not which is one of the most comprehensive home databases online. So while people are using our site for listing information, they are also using Zillow to get information on all homes- both on and off the market.
That said, BairdWarner.com is indeed a very nice site and is definitely a good resource for buyers and sellers.
But isn’t it true that Baird and Warner limits access to it’s listings to other Broker sites which actually can be a disservice to it’s own clients. The only site B&W allows is it’s own and Realtor.com. Your test is flawed at best.
Rich, you are incorrect. Baird & Warner does not limit access to its listings only to other broker sites. Three examples of non-broker sites where you will find Baird & Warner listings are ChicagoTribune.com, SunTimes.com and Google.com.
Brett Shaw from Cyberhomes:
I’ve seen this all before. A real estate company finds one MLS service that doesn’t send it’s listings out to real estate websites and then convinces it’s members that these sites are horrible for the industry. Baird & Warner has a nice website (Nice plug) and I’m sure that it has all the listings in thier market, but you can’t make a complete nationwide comparison based on the Chicagoland area. If you run this same scenario anywhere else, B&W will have 0 listings. As Scott says, it depends on the market you are searching in and if the local MLS has syndicated it’s listings online.
Brett,
First, I wasn’t making “a complete nationwide comparison”. The scope of this blog is Chicago Metro Area Real Estate (hence the name).
Second, I never said that your site or the others mentioned were “horrible for the industry”. I reported the results of one simple test which was far from scientific.
Home buyers in the Chicago Metro Area have a right to know how the various online search tools stack up.
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