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It’s time for the cold hard truth for Sacramento real estate that many home buyers and sellers don’t know as well as a few real estate agents, as well. If you are looking for transparency and honesty…read on.
Home Buyers Are Being Fooled
If home buyers think they see all the homes for sale in and around Sacramento on Zillow or Trulia, they are sadly mistaken. These Internet sites are not really in business to provide accurate information to the home buyers or home sellers.
Update: Today, August 8, 2012 This is what Zillow & Trulia show as available homes for sale for Sacramento, Placer, El Dorado and Yolo Counties…
Zillow Shows Homes For Sale Trulia Shows Homes For Sale
9,799 Homes in Sac County 16,743 Homes in Sac County
878 Homes in Yolo County 1,443 Homes in Yolo County
3,808 Homes in Placer County 5,326 Homes in Placer County
2,432 Homes in El Dorado County 3,620 Homes in El Dorado County
Want to know the TRUTH as of today, at this moment in time here are the REAL numbers of available homes for sale in each one of the Counties as per the MLS:
- Sacramento County has 1, 824 homes for Sale
- Yolo County has 282 Homes for Sale
- Placer County has 821 Homes for Sale
- El Dorado County has 658 Homes for Sale
Dang sure there is a difference in what the REAL number of homes for sale are. With homes flying off the real estate market, a home buyer would be insane to rely on Zillow and Trulia for their information. Best decide what experienced REALTOR® you want to work with and have them send you the REAL homes for sale so you don’t waste your time!
The Truth About Zillow and Trulia
These real estate Internet sites make their money advertising. Agents who are willing to pay Zillow for zip codes and trulia so they can get clients, keep these Internet sites up and running. The amount the agent pays to be the”exclusive top agent” (or whatever the lingo of the day is) for these companies, is based on how many times buyers and home sellers type in a zip code. The more a home buyer or home seller types a zip code, the more the agent will have to pay if they want to be the “top agent” and get those “leads.” Yes, you are considered a lead and the agent is buying you.
Now, you could say, I don’t really care if an agent is willing to pay zillow or trulia so they can appear to be a “top agent.” But, what you should care about, I am going to share with you next…
Sacramento MLS (where all the homes for sale are listed and is the most current 24-7), will not syndicate the listings (homes for sale) to zillow or trulia. There are many reasons for this, one being that those sites are not willing to abide by the rules set forth in MLS to keep the information secure, updated and remove all listings….there’s more but let’s get back to the task at hand.
This means those real estate Internet sites that you are running to and looking at homes for sale have old information, inaccurate information and certainly not all the homes for sale that are currently on the real estate market for sale through MLS.
Zillow and Trulia do not have ALL the current homes for sale
Remember, those real estate sites are there for one reason and one reason only, to make money selling advertising! As long as agents pay these Internet sites, the beat will continue and you, the home buyer and home seller will be frustrated, confused and sold as leads!
Only real estate agents who are willing to add their own homes for sale are on zillow and trulia. And then of course, since the listings are not an actual feed, the listing is left on zillow and trulia even though it may be sold or have an accepted offer. Many times, a REALTOR® will receive a phone call from a home buyer who saw a house for sale on trulia or zillow only to find that home SOLD eons ago. It is frustrating for you and it’s frustrating for us.
As a Home Buyer Don’t You Want All The Current Homes For Sale?
If you REALLY want to see ALL the actual homes for sale that do NOT have offers and are NOT sold, home buyers need to hook-up with a REALTOR and have the REAL homes sent to them via the Sacramento MLS system. I only send my home buyers homes they can actually buy. And my home buyers get the newest home for sale sent to them directly on their email. As REALTORs we are the source for accurate information not Internet sites.
That’s the truth of it so consider yourself real estate informed…as always, your REALTOR in Sacramento and the surrounding areas. Hope you found that insightful and helpful. It’s called transparency!
Don’t Rely on Zillow and Trulia if you are a Home Buyer or Home Seller
In this real estate market if you rely on the information you see on Zillow and Trulia, it will cost you money since you won’t be looking at all the homes for sale or the houses that are actually available. As time goes by, and prices go up, this can definitely cost you money. Not to mention the home that you could have had if ONLY you would have known it was for sale.
If you would like to read about Zillow and how they confuse home buyers and hurt home sellers, be sure to read, Let’s Fire All Appraisers and The MLS. Or perhaps you might like to read how some questionable people can sabotage a listing and place it on zillow, Zillow Fence For Lender. Home Sellers should ready 8419 Zinnia Way Home is Coming SOON! where Zillow, Trulia and REALTOR.com all gave this home a MOST inappropriate value and were dead wrong since it sold and appraised for $210,000. I could go on and on but I think you got the point. These sites are strictly in the business to count all the clicks they get from buyers and sellers so they can sell zip codes to agents.
Hi Gena – Brad from Zillow here. (we met on ActiveRain)
Posts like this are good exercises for us, because it forces us to do a deep data investigation to find areas of improvement. First we looked at our data and then we looked at some other IDX websites in the area.
One of the big differences we found is that our numbers are including new construction listings from some of our builder partners and a lot of foreclosure data – two categories of housing that don’t always appear in a MLS. Perhaps we can do a better job filtering and displaying these categories? I’ll take that suggestion to our design teams.
Secondly, in looking at some IDX sites in your area, I noticed differences there too. For example Redfin shows 2292 actives in Sacramento Country verses your 1824 and Redfin shows 1072 actives in El Dorado Country verses your 658. I believe you are only counting single family homes in your numbers, because when I set the filter to only show that housing type on Redfin, the numbers get a lot closer.
Lastly, it would be interesting to see if we are all using the same search regions. I don’t know how the footprint of your MLS overlays against government (and Google/BIng) county lines.
As always, I’m available to talk about this in person at 707 646-1876 or brada at zillow dot com. Further, scouring through and interpreting all this data is a great example why someone should hire a REALTOR like yourself when they reach the point of becoming a serious buyer.
Hi Brad,
Of course I remember you. Hope all is well with you and the family!
In terms of the numbers, there is no way that the numbers will be right unless and until you have the Metrolist backing to send Zillow the feed for those listings. Currently, the only way you are actually getting data is either from an agent who wants to give Zillow the listing info or if you scrape it from another site. Either way, it is not accurate information.
The last I heard when talking to both my MLS and Ben from Zillow, there was not an agreement to give Zillow the Sacramento MLS feed since Zillow had their lawyers draw up documents that stated Zillow would own the listing information for perpetuity, could sell the listing information to anyone they chose to and they would not have to keep the information updated or remove the information once the listing was sold. Unless and until Zillow agrees to the standards of our Metrolist System, there will not be accurate data displayed on Zillow or Trulia.
Don’t worry about Google Bing and County lines…Sacramento County, Placer County, El Dorado County and Yolo County are just that and nothing more…
In terms of Redfin, perhaps they too do not update their site in terms of when a home has an accepted offer…I didn’t check Refin out and the MLS in Sacramento is the authority when it comes to listings, not Refin…Metrolist is the one you need to emulate, not Redfin.
Foreclosures are included and many builders put their lisitngs into our MLS as well….there would have to be some MAJOR building to cover the spread in these numbers.
I applaud you for trying to make sense of such inadequate information on Zillow but these are not good excuses. The public can see right through all this. As a Sacramento REALTOR®, I want the home buyers and home sellers to have valid, up-to-date information.