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If you are trying to get the sense of a local housing market, is realtor.com a reasonably good way to do it?
Obviously seeing the houses in person is far more useful, but if you're prospecting from a distance and trying to decide whether you should focus on one town in an area versus another, will you get a reasonably good idea about their price and housing differences from realtor.com?
Are most of the houses for sale in an average town listed on that site? Does it vary a lot from place to place?
Is some other web site a better choice for what I'm describing?
I am not a realtor, but I have found Realtor.com very useful in the past. I use it in conjunction with Zillow. The "Zestimates" on Zillow are usually moderately below market value, however, they have a very useful map that shows the approximate value of homes in the same neighborhood as well as other sales in the area. This can often give you a good idea how a neighborhood is performing.
Realtor.com uses the MLS database, and therefore displays every home for sale, outside of FSBOs. Realtor.com will be the most up-to-date home listing site available.
You may also find Trulia and Zillow useful to get additional information on individual homes, or town trends. Zillow estimates (zestimates) can be hit or miss though, but the site contains useful information nonetheless.
In our market REALTOR.com tends to be a bit out of date for listing statuses. Many times listings are under contract but there is a big delay between an agent updating the information in our MLS and REALTOR.com pulling the information from its feeds.
If you are trying to get the sense of a local housing market, is realtor.com a reasonably good way to do it?
Obviously seeing the houses in person is far more useful, but if you're prospecting from a distance and trying to decide whether you should focus on one town in an area versus another, will you get a reasonably good idea about their price and housing differences from realtor.com?
Are most of the houses for sale in an average town listed on that site? Does it vary a lot from place to place?
Is some other web site a better choice for what I'm describing?
While not perfect, unless you are pulling active listing data directly from the MLS in the market you are searching, for online feel of the local market Realtor dot com is about as good as it gets. Of course, the data in Realtor dot com is only as good as the agent who enters it. Those who market properly with it and are members (paying a fee) have more info. posted about the listings.
I pretty much hate their new site. The only way I can use it anymore is from their iPhone app, and even it kinda sucks.
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