Calls come to our office all the time from potential buyers who are out looking for a home and are not working with a REALTOR. They search online and in print ads and then go around trying to find the house that sounded so perfect in the ad, only to discover that it doesn’t really meet their needs or match their search criteria, or worse, it’s no longer available. .
These folks are doing it the hard way. First of all, print ads are notoriously out of date. Real estate moves in real time, but print ads are a snapshot in time. Due to magazine and newspaper deadlines, and the lag time it takes to print and distribute, print ads can be weeks behind what is current. For monthly publications, the data may be even more out of date by the time you pick up the magazine.
For those who want to go it alone, REALTOR.com and real estate company sites that link directly to the local Multiple Listing Service are your best bets for accurate, real-time information. Most of the Internet sites that the public has access to are not in real time. Sometimes it takes 3 days or more for information on the MLS to propagate to sites like Zillow or Trulia. This means that very often buyers are looking for houses that are already under contract, or in the case of monthly publications, they may be looking for a house that sold days or weeks ago.
Why would a potential buyer go to the trouble of trying to get an address from an ad (addresses are not provided most of the time), then map it on MapQuest or another internet mapping site, and then drive around looking for the house? Even if they can find the house, they can’t see inside unless they call the realtor to let them in. The listing agent may or may not have time to show you at that time, so you may have to drive back at another time to actually see the interior. This process has to be repeated for each house they want to see. This has to be the most inefficient use of a buyer’s time, but many buyers start out this way.
Calling a real estate agent early in the process is a smarter way to go. If you called your local real estate office and gave the “agent on duty” a list of your search criteria, that agent could do a real-time MLS search and email you the actual MLS fact sheets. for each listing that matched your Search Criteria. They would then be able to review each listing in full detail (including room sizes, interior features, exterior features, etc.). They could see all the photos the listing agent took (MLS allows us to upload a maximum of 12 photos), and directions to the house are included with each listing. The agent will only search for “active” listings, so the email will not contain listings that are not available. Now the buyer can select ads that look and sound good on paper. What a concept!
The next step would be to call back the agent who emailed the listings and schedule a time to go look at the removed listing of homes. For those who want to drive around and see the neighborhood before seeing the interior, they can easily do so because the directions are there on the MLS fact sheet.
Keep in mind that it costs nothing to have an agent work for you on the buyer’s side. When a seller lists his property, he agrees in advance to pay a listing fee. When you sell, that commission is split between the listing agent/company and the buyer’s agent/company. Therefore, the buyer’s agents are paid from the listing commission, but in reality they work exclusively for the buyer.
Since it’s a free service and tremendously more time efficient, it’s obviously a better decision to call an agent early in the process and let them do all the legwork to find the perfect home for the prospective buyer. . Is so easy! Why would anyone choose to do it the hard way?