The Accuracy of Real Estate Websites
When home buyers are going online to search for homes, is the information they receive accurate? The answer: it depends what websites they are on! A recent study was completed that included 5 real estate websites that included our very own Windermere, Long & Foster from back east, Redfin, Trulia and Zillow. The results were not overly surprising. Listings on the 3 brokerage websites were very accurate while the accuracy on Zillow and Trulia fell way short. The number of agent listed homes were 100% on the brokerage sites while Trulia was 81% and Zillow was 79%. This is alot of homes on the market that are not being shown!
One very interesting number that came out of the study was the fact that when new homes came on the market they showed up instantly on the brokerage websites ( most sweep the mls every quarter hour) while new listings showed up on Zillow, on average, 7 days later and on Trulia, 9 days later. In other words, if a great home came on the market, and you used Zillow or Trulia, it may have gotten several offers before it ever appeared on these 2 websites. Another interesting set of numbers showed that 37% and 36% of the homes on Trulia and Zillow were not even active listings! This is pretty alarming. Many homes that are on these websites remain even though the listing had expired, was cancelled or had already been sold!
And what about the Zillow “Zestimate”? Don’t even get me started here! They are simply NOT accurate.