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:
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.
Fran Bailey specializes in downtown Chicago, Lincoln Park and Lake View condos, co-op apartments and houses. She has shared home buying and selling advice since 2006 and written about over 130 Chicago high rises. To schedule showings for any listings, get a 
