searching MLS listings on Sacramento Bee (sale, real estate, houses)

[christeen]

Anyone else having problems running MLS searches on the sacbee.com site? If I run my usual search (which usually netted 40+ matches), I now get only 16 (and I doubt that many were sold in a week). But if I take out my preference for 2+ garages, I get 49 matches, including several homes that should've made it in the original search.

I emailed the sacbee folks but no response. Anyone else having problems?

[CityGirl72]

I use ziprealty for my searches - they have the same houses as Sac Bee as far as I can see

[christeen]

I didn't want to give ziprealty my contact info. But I guess I could use fake info? Thanks!

[dickens12]

try Sacramento Real Estate Worked for me.

[ColfaxTeri]

Try MetroList Homes and real estate in northern California - MetroList the official MLS

That is the MLS site where all the data for almost all the other sites is coming from. They just did a big upgrade and changed some fields, including the garage field, so maybe Sac Bee is not matching fields correctly yet on the filters.

[DMenscha]

Or try Realtor.com where you can search by zip code among other criteria.

[MamaToThree]

Yeah, go directly to Homes and real estate in northern California - MetroList the official MLS That's what Sac Bee uses.

[christeen]

Thanks everyone. I've tried the official MLS site but having the same problem -- properties not showing up when I add the garage criteria. Looks like something got messed up in their upgrades. I've emailed them so hopefully they can fix this. I also noticed they get more hits than the SacBee listing. Looks like Sac Bee doesn't include homes that are pending sale?

I'll try the other sites too. Thanks!

[DyaneRiemer]

The month of March saw the largest number of homes go pending in the Sacramento area since the downturn began in July of 2005. Over 2800 homes went pending, and this is double the number of homes which went pending in February, so supply inventories are low and demand is high. There is currently only a 4.4 month supply of homes on the market, so it doesn't surprise me that you aren't getting the same number of results you once received on the MLS. I'm not getting them either, and I use the offical MLS! With Spring being peak home-buying season, those numbers aren't likely to improve much over the next few months. Just keep looking, and maybe something will pop up that you will like!

[christeen]

Thanks, Dyane. That explains why there are fewer homes overall, but the search I run drops lots of houses when I add in the "garage" criteria -- houses that do have the # of garages I specify just aren't listed. If I don't use the garage criteria, thoses houses will show up again (they're not pending since I've seen them at open house, etc).

Also, I noticed the official MLS often lists houses that are pending sale. Since those listings only show the asking price, how can we find out the actual sale price of the home? I think Zillow does it once it's recorded, but how can you find the sale price while it's still pending? Do realtors just call each other and ask to find out?

Thanks!