Today’s blog post pretty much wrote itself after I posted on Facebook an article describing how much online traffic the two big online Real Estate portals, Zillow and Trulia, have versus the portal controlled by the National Association of Realtors – Realtor.com.   Faithful readers began a lively discussion and the entire transcript evolved into an entire blog post.    Enjoy!

Zillow and Trulia get more than double the online traffic than the next three major online real estate portals combined, including Realtor.com. Even though listing data on Trulia and Zillow is more frequently wrong or out of date. Do people LIKE being lied to? I guess they don’t call is real estate porn for nothing.

http://www.floridarealtors.org/NewsAndEvents/article.cfm?p=3&id=311058

The Beyond Syndication 2014 report by Arizona-based Clareity Consulting, a real estate industry information technology consulting firm, said that Zillow and Trulia’s real estate networks’ Web traffic totaled 84.6 million unique visitors in May.

That compares with the 40.2 million combined unique visitors in May of three other online real estate networks, the Clareity report said, including Move Inc., which operates NAR’s Realtor.com website.

Nelson asked:   This is so true. What is the best app for more accurate info? What do you recommend?

I replied:   On a nationwide basis, the most accurate online portal is Realtor.com. For local searching here in South Florida your favorite local agent or brokerage. My MLS on my personal website contains data from our local MLS. Check out www.sunshineguru.com. For a handheld app, use my app – pulls the same data. Download my mobile app atwww.mobileapp.robertdarrow.com

Mike asked:   Without access to the MLS, those sites give more information than any of the other ones – even if it is wrong, most people don’t know that. Looking at any one company is only going to show only its own listings, and not every one lists with multiple services. It seems as though those 2 sites have the most listings and most exposure… SO – if that’s not true, why hasn’t the competition stepped up its game? I understand the need to keep the MLS to the pros – but consumers obviously want a way to search for listings themselves before or during a realtor comes into play. Is there an alternative?

Joe asked:   In my humble outside the bizz opinion it is because when you search an address they are at the top of every search, so they are paying the search engines to display them first. I agree about the inaccuracies. Zillow at one time was displaying my property for sale when it was not for sale and was not on the multi-list. Some agent who had a criminal record somehow created the listing on Zillow. I was so worried that I called the security guards to notify them my place was not for sale and not to be shown.

I replied:   Zillow and Trulia get most of their data from local MLS feeds, but they don’t do a very good job of making sure the data remains accurate when prices change, or when properties sell. That’s why often you see inaccurate prices, or properties listed that are not for sale.

The best online database on a national level is Realtor.com. Sadly they’re behind the curve as far as the sophistication of their website is concerned. But they are almost finished with a comprehensive overhaul so the site might leapfrog over the other two later this year.

Trulia also owns the website “Postlets.com.” and when a private home owner or a Realtor creates a Postlet for a particular property, it pushes that property data up into the Trulia database. But a Postlet has a few problems. (1) anyone can create a Postlet for any property. If I were to create a Postlet for a house, then that house would show up on Trulia as an active listing. (2) Postlets don’t have accurate property information about the status of the listing. No one polices when a property’s price changes, or when it goes under contract. So some properties that are listed by Postlet creation just live in the database in perpetuity.

Local websites, for both COMPANIES and for AGENTS usually get their feeds of property data from their local MLS.   So MY website, and MY handheld app reflect exactly what is available in my local MLS. Same for my office’s website, and should be the same for you as well. For example, my brother-in-law likes using the website for Rubloff because he just likes it best. Other people like the website for @properties, or Coldwell Banker. But each LOCAL office website should be accurate in your market. The down side is that these public websites only display current homes for sale. By agreement, they cannot display historic information or sold data for specific properties.

This happened to me as well. Trulia has some sort of database hiccup where a LOT of local (south florida) old Postlets got sent to Trulia by mistake even though the postlets were old and long expired. In that massive data dump, my hose showed up as a new listing as well, and having such nosy neighbors, I had a stern knock on my front door one evening this spring with my next door neighbor demanding WFT I was doing by selling my house so quickly after moving in. The data included all the old photographs and listing information and you’d never have known that the listing was a complete and utter fabrication.

Mike commented back:    That down side you mention is a big one – I look at it from the consumer side… As society moves towards (or gets more comfortable in) an “information at your fingertips, i want it now and don’t want to talk to anyone” mentality with the internet, sites like zillow and trulia DO offer sold data and historic information (again – whether it’s right or not doesn’t matter because no one is telling anyone that it’s wrong, and I honestly think it’s more informational than anything else). That information can help someone say “well, maybe I could sell my house,” or “prices are lower now than 5 years ago – maybe I can jump into the market,” or even they’ll find something their realtor missed cause people are never clear in what they’re asking for. Is there data to show that people aren’t using realtors because of these sites? Anything we saw on Zillow had a realtor attached to it if we wanted to see something. I’ll be interested to see the realtor.com changes and whether that reporting is accurate or not.

I replied:   The changes that Realtor.com will release will of course be mostly to the usability of the site, the community aspect (Trulia also owns Active Rain – a very popular online community of agents and active property afficianados) but they will never release the historical data. The level of people who buy, and who sell, with a Realtor stays historically fairly constant with fluctuations due to market conditions. When the market is hot (like now) you see more FSBO sellers able to sell successfully. But the number of FSBO sellers does stay remarkably constant around only 12% of transactions. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but right now 88% of FSBO sellers will eventually list their homes with a Realtor to sell. The reason is the whole concept of “Agency.” It means “I stand for you.” You hire me to sell your home, and it’s not just the MLS, or the fluffy brochure, or the coffee and crumpets at open house. But the entire concept of me (and my network of colleagues, extended through the MLS) going out, finding a good qualified buyer, negotiating with them, and making sure they fulfill their terms of the contract, that has stood the ages. The whole concept of Agency in this way has been in place since Feudal England and apparently no matter how much information that home buyers and sellers gain access to can negate the underlying principal of having one person representing YOUR interests, working their contacts and sphere, and getting someone to come to the table with a giant pile of money to exchange for your property. Or the other way around in the case of an Agent working for a buyer.