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The only reliable sources? I thought all the previous posters in this thread gave excellent advice.
You have misquoted me.
I did not say that "I Check Realtor.com" .... nor did I say that the OP would get any advice from the Realtor websites. There are several posters who have given excellent advice to the OP.
RI Living.com and Realtor.com do not give advice to buyers. You are well aware of the services that MLS provides to consumers. There is no need whatsoever for any nit-picking.
The official MLS sites don't include recent sales, which are at least as useful for getting a sense of actual prices paid vs asking price (MLS won't give you history of price cuts prior to current asking price either). I've found redfin.com the most useful of the public sites for getting sales data for an area with a good variety of search criteria you can specify; agrees with the town assessors' offices in the cases I've compared.
The official MLS sites don't include recent sales, which are at least as useful for getting a sense of actual prices paid vs asking price (MLS won't give you history of price cuts prior to current asking price either). I've found redfin.com the most useful of the public sites for getting sales data for an area with a good variety of search criteria you can specify; agrees with the town assessors' offices in the cases I've compared.
Yes, I agree those sites do not give sales prices or price reduction history. There is a reason for that. Any sites other than the local MLS or the National Assoc. of Realtors' websites are not reliable. They are not "fed" the information from the brokers/agents or municipalities, because it is not uncommon for sales prices to include (in some areas) for example, personal property that was included in a sale. Estate properties that were sold furnished, and so forth. Price cuts are a non-issue. Only the recorded sale price on the deed is acceptable.
The only reliable information is gathered from bona fide Realtor Assoc./MLS websites. The sites are set up to drive business to the Realtors who have the listings, or the offices who have the listings. There are some agents who pay to have their listings (advertised) "fed" to Zillow by choice and that is perfectly fine.
Realtors do not reveal sale prices except when working with a buyer or seller and using reliable information/sale prices when doing market analyses. Addtionally, only a Realtor will be able to advise a potential buyer as to whether or not a property they may be interested in is "a pending sale" due to inspection periods. Or, "a pending sale" due to a mortgage contingency. All of this information is confidential and only revealed to a genuine buyer or seller. Buyers or sellers should not rely on anecdotal information for one of the largest purchases of their lifetime.
Advice or comments about neighborhoods, demographics, lifestyle, quality of schools, etc. is perfectly fine for the public to talk to posters about. Realtors cannot discuss those matters, cannot discriminate, and cannot divulge any information that could be construed as discrimination, steering people to certain neighborhoods, or veering out of their areas of expertise, sphere of influence, or the Realtors Code of Ethics or the Fair Housing Laws whatsoever.
But the recorded sales prices on the deeds are a matter of public record -- in most RI towns those sales prices are available online as part of the parcel listing from city/town assessor's office, though not in a form as convenient to search as third-party sites. Not only do those town records get posted to the big third-party sites, the ProJo actually still runs a weekly listing of sales including prices for the metro area.
Are you saying the sales prices recorded on the deeds are not accurate??? I'm not sure what else you could be claiming. That the data the towns provide doesn't match what was submited on the deed? I don't get it.
True, there is context you have to know, like if a transfer was done at a nominal price within a family, or if a big repair credit was given or such. Most sales are not *that* oddball, though. Surely if you look over a couple of dozen sales over the last year in an area of interest, you'll learn something useful about *actual* vs asking prices. I can tell you for sure that having done that (via Redfin and Trulia) as an initial step in researching our neighborhood of interest, our sense of prices was exactly on target.
I know in the case of our own house purchased this year, the accurate final sales price was available to the world on Zillow, Redfin, etc. within 24 hours of our closing. Likewise, for the four comps on our appraisal, the prices listed on websites matched to the penny the prices our appraiser pulled from whatever his official source was. And for any comps discussed by our buyers agent, again, the numbers he mentioned matched exactly what anyone would have found on Redfin or Trulia or the town assessors' pages.
I don't recommend those sites as one's only source of information, especially when you've moved from choosing neighborhoods to specific properties -- our own buyers agent knew details about several potential comps that were very useful in interpreting their sale prices. But I'm not sure why someone would pass up scanning actual recent sales data in favor of only looking at current active listings.
As you know, RILiving.com is the official website of the RI Statewide MLS. Realtor.com is the official website of the National Association of Realtors. Both are updated as soon as an agent enters a listing on those sites within 24 hrs. of entering into MLS.
Obviously. However, both sites are rife with errors and omissions but they are what we've got for RE listings. My point was that all the previous posters gave very reliable advice and your post appeared to call that into question.
Obviously. However, both sites are rife with errors and omissions but they are what we've got for RE listings. My point was that all the previous posters gave very reliable advice and your post appeared to call that into question.
Wrong again Holly. See my Post #11 in response to your supposition. End of program.
Check out the Redfin site. Redfin now lists Rhode Island properties,
and this is the place I did all my research for our new home in California.
I found it the most user-friendly. I dumped Zillow and Trulia long ago.
Redfin shows listing/price history, other houses at the similar price point in the area,
and they also show sold prices. It stays up to date, at least here in CA.
Realtor.com and especially RI Living are the most reliable sites for real estate purchase in RI.
I don't have an opinion about Redfin, but the additional information available on such sites as Zillow and Trulia, while sometimes very interesting, can be extremely unreliable. The zestimate, past sales prices, dates of sale/off market, etc. on these sites may or may not be helpful, depending on the accuracy of the online source the site picks up. My experience is often the most important information is way off base and factually incorrect. Sometimes drastically so.
Check out the Redfin site. Redfin now lists Rhode Island properties,
and this is the place I did all my research for our new home in California.
I found it the most user-friendly. I dumped Zillow and Trulia long ago.
Redfin shows listing/price history, other houses at the similar price point in the area,
and they also show sold prices. It stays up to date, at least here in CA.
I just bought my house using Redfin and highly, highly recommend it. The amazing thing is that not only is it a content-based site like Zillow or Trulia, it's also a full-service agency. You know how people used to book vacations using travel agents, and then in the '90s Expedia or whatever came along and travel agents were suddenly obsolete? Redfin makes traditional agencies seem like those travel agents. I'm surprised nobody came up with it 15 years ago.
It's still just getting started in Rhode Island, but that was a good thing for me because I got a real personal touch. I believe the whole operation is still just Jeremy (whose name and photo are in the Redfin link above) and his part-time colleague Brian, who were both awesome. I can tell you this: I used multiple agents besides Redfin -- can't put your eggs in too many baskets. I got a far better selection of houses with Redfin, and I got into them faster. I doubt I would have been able to successfully bid on the house I ultimately purchased without Redfin; it only worked out because I managed to see it in the first couple of days it was on the market. There was another, similar bid, but mine was accepted in part because I was first.
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