Anthony, where can I find a house online? Where can I find those properties? Where do I search?

Well, really. I’m gonna ask you, where do you search?

There’s so many places online now that have all the data that’s out there.

In the old days, for those of you who don’t know, or don’t remember, what used to happen was, a buyer would come to me or another real estate agent, and they would say, “Anthony, we would like to find a house. Here’s our criteria. We need this number of beds and baths and square footage, and lot size, and kinda this general area.” Whatever.

And I would go to a book, a paper printed book, and I would flip through and I’d have to search through and kinda cross-reference and find those properties to show. When they moved into a computerized system, it was a DOS based system, which some of you may remember, I had to search through there and it would spit out a handful of properties and then I would say, “These are the properties that you have. There’s six of them. Let’s go look at all six of them then Pick one.” Because that’s kinda what it was, right?

Well, now, it’s totally different.  You don’t need me to pull lists for you you don’t need me to put properties in your email box. As a matter of fact, chances are you’re getting overwhelmed with the number of properties that you have been searching for.

Because there’s sites like Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com and others that have spent millions and millions and millions of dollars in developing apps and features that let you go in, as the consumer, and freely search for these properties.

Here’s the only downside to those types of applications, is that, when you’re searching on your phone and you find a property, there’s a percentage of those properties that are not even available anymore. They’ve already gone into escrow or maybe they even sold. Stories upon stories of people saying “Well, I found the perfect property I was looking for, it was listed as active on Zillow or Trulia or even Realtor.com and now I find out it has been sold many months ago.

So, a couple things you need to keep in mind. Those are fine apps to use, if you’re comfortable using them, you already have them downloaded, use them, that’s fine. But, once you find something, you have to respond immediately and say, “Anthony, I’m ready to go look at this house. Let’s go take a look at this house right now!.”  Your agent will immediately pull them up in the MLS which is most accurate and tell you if it’s still available.

Now, keep in mind, those applications are advertising companies. They’re not there just for the sake of letting you have access to listings. They’re not there because real estate agents are saying, “Could you please distribute my listings to all of these people?” No. They’re advertising companies and what they do is they sell advertising to real estate agents, primarily.

They say, “Anthony, give us thousands of dollars per month. Yes, per month. And we’ll make sure your ads show up in these different zip codes around where you prefer to work.” And they make a lot of money doing this.

So, when you’re searching, you’re gonna see real estate agents who are listed next to those properties. Those are not the listing agents. Those are more likely people who are paying for advertising. But it doesn’t mean they’re a good agent. Maybe they are, maybe they’re not. We don’t know. But do you want to take the chance and roll the dice? That’s up to you.

Make sure you get connected with an agent that you’re very comfortable with and who is skilled and knows what they’re doing and has experience.

So now there’s another option that you can explore as well, is that, like most agents, I have direct access to the Multiple Listing Service, of course, and what I can do is take the criteria of the home you’re looking for and put it in the system. I can set up an initial search for you. And then you would have access to that particular portal that is directly connected to the Multiple Listing Service so that when you’re searching or get notifications, when you’re looking and you see that one property and think, “That’s a great property.” and an hour later you go back and look in, “Oh no, it’s pending.” you know that it’s updated and accurate on the Multiple Listing Service, all the time. And that you also have the ability to create other multiple searches so that you can get notified of all the properties that are available.

This service varies from MLS to MLS so be sure to check with your agent to see if they have it.