Home Search

If I can help you with your home search and purchase please contact me.

If I can help you with your home search and purchase please contact me.

There used to be a link to a home search here. It is a standard feature of most real estate websites and it isn’t free at least not to the owner of the website. My name would be displayed as the contact person for all homes for sale in the area.

Real estate agents pay a lot of money to have their names show up next to their own listings and those of other agents. With so many home online home searches available I just couldn’t see the point of continuing to pay for a home search.

I can not compete with the large companies that can hire people to create a lovely website. Large companies spend a lot of money to make sure their websites come up first on any search. I don’t have enough money to compete with large corporations and wealthy investors.

Through what is known as “broker reciprocity” any real estate agent can show an interested buyer any home they see for sale on those real estate websites.

When I put a house on the market it goes into the NorthstarMLS and from there the data is fed to a zillion real estate websites including the websites of the largest real estate companies and the real estate websites with the most traffic. I did a search on the address of one of our listings and came up with about 792,000 results (0.96 seconds)

I have always told my clients that they should use the website that they like best and most of them use competitors’ websites.

Real estate companies like Zillow get real estate agents from competing companies to pay them for a presence on the Zillow website. Homes for sale are used to “capture” leads. Instead of capturing leads, my strategy has always been to attract clients.

Much of my business comes from referrals and from past clients and besides having my name next to someone else’s listing seems deceptive.

Honestly, it is all crazy and out of control and some really big companies are making a lot of money without adding much if any value to the home buying process.

I am always happy to help anyone who wants to buy a house and I can set up a personalized search through the same MLS that is feeding the data to all of the other sites. Homebuyers can also set up searches of their own once they are in the search portal.

Online searches are usually free. Real estate agents pay for them. Collectively real estate agents pay more for the “free searches” than they ever get back in commissions yet they keep paying.

If I can help you with your home search and purchase please contact me.

 

 

 

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