Accuracy of Online Property Searches: An Examination of Several Sites and the Reliability of Their Listings in Three Markets

Case Study Conducted By:
The WAV Group
www.wavgroup.com

Online property search for Dallas, Miami and San Diego

Online property search makes sense for consumers. Although the process of purchasing a home should always involve a licensed REALTOR®, shopping for a place to live or a home to buy can be done privately on an internet web browser. What are the best online sites for finding a home?

There has been a significant change in the landscape of property search in the past three years. Property search is no longer restricted to agent and broker websites. New website offerings have emerged to provide consumers with third party listing portals. Among these alternatives are the new household brands of Roost, Trulia, Zillow, Yahoo, and Google. Each provides web visitors with their own special sauce of home shopping variety. What is common among them is that they display listings online as advertising – much in the same way that the newspaper does each Saturday. Also common is that they rely on the advertiser for maintaining listing accuracy of the homes.

Today, consumers generally pick websites based upon usability and property search features. Until now, very little research has been done on listing accuracy – a key demand of today’s online shopper. Understanding that websites get their listing information from a variety of sources, we were interested in knowing the differences. WAV Group conducted an independent study commissioned by Roost.com to evaluate data accuracy across some of these online properties. After all, inaccurate and outdated listings can cause consumers frustration and inadvertently damage the reputation of real estate agents, who could lose possible customers and ultimately be thought of as unreliable – exactly the opposite reputation they want to have in a trust-based business.

WAV Group researched three methods of getting property search information. The first method was information provided by a local Realtor. The second was research done on an IDX-powered website like Roost.com and broker websites. The last method entailed searching on advertising websites like Google, Yahoo, Zillow and Trulia and others.

WAV Group research concluded the most accurate source of listing information is the local multiple listing service (MLS). This is an industry standard database used by agents and brokers to share listing information that operates in real time and represents the most accurate source of homes for sale. Unfortunately, public access to this database for property search is not permitted unless a licensed agent performs the search.

To serve the needs of agents wishing to make MLS property search available to consumers, all MLSs nationwide have deployed a standard called Internet Data Exchange, or IDX. Through this standard, agent and broker members of the MLS can provide a property search of the MLS listings database to the public. WAV Group research established that searchable housing information on IDX-powered websites is the most accurate public home search available – usually 96% to 98% accurate. The small percentages of differences occur because IDX data is typically refreshed once a day. Any home that gets sold, newly listed, expired, or has had a price change gets updated within 24 hours.

By contrast, even though many of the advertising websites also refresh their data every day, they underperformed the IDX-powered websites like Roost.com or broker websites. In Dallas, Google offered the best-case scenario for listing accuracy by displaying 56 of the 81 listings found in the MLS, or 69% of the listings. In San Diego, Yahoo! was missing 70 out of the 76 listings found in the MLS, or listing accuracy of just 8%. Trulia and Zillow also had mixed results from city to city. In Dallas and Miami they both displayed about 50% of the listings in our search, but in San Diego they also suffered with less than 15% of the MLS listings found on their site.

Methodology
To achieve comparable data across the three markets the search criteria was limited and only the price points were allowed to change depending on the market. The basic search criteria was simple:
Single Family Residential homes for resale. Homes with exactly 3 bedrooms and exactly 2 bathrooms. A “city” search was used for all websites meaning that, for example, “Dallas, TX” was typed into the search field. Price points used in each market were adjusted to ensure that as close to 100 listings appeared as possible. The search was performed on each site on the same day and in as short amount of time as possible, closely mirroring typical consumer search behavior.
Price points used:

• Dallas: $250k – $300k
• Miami: $450k – $500k
• San Diego: $300k – $350k
• Single Family Home

Methodology: Problems and Solutions
A problem with the city search feature arose in San Diego. The Tempo MLS system used by licensed agents in the San Diego County Regional MLS (SANDICOR) defined “San Diego” to a select few Zip codes. Noting that all the websites, including IDX, were using a wider search, the MLS search was conducted again with a more encompassing list of Zip codes specifically matching those Zips encountered at Roost.com, Trulia.com,
Zillow.com and Google.com for the city name “San Diego”.

Detailed Results

Dallas

Note: Century21DFW.com was used selected for the broker IDX

Accurate listings by website in Dallas

Miami

Note: OceanViews.com was used for broker website IDX data

Accurate listings by website in Miami

San Diego

Note: ReMaxreconsultants.com was used for broker website IDX data

Accurate listings by website in San Diego

Clearly brokers and agents are looking to promote seller listings online in the best possible way to reach as many buyers as possible. Unfortunately the process in place today for getting accurate and complete listing information to third party websites is an awesome challenge. By comparison to IDX powered websites or the MLS listings in Dallas, Miami or San Diego, sites like Google, Yahoo, Trulia, and Zillow are still struggling to collect a comparable, comprehensive data set of accurately displayed listings.

About WAV Group
WAV Group is a leader in providing consulting services to the real estate industry.

The company is comprised of corporate executives with a depth of expertise in the real estate, consumer packaged goods and technology sectors. WAV Group has demonstrated objective thought leadership by publishing studies written for some of the largest organizations in the industry including the National Association of REALTORS®, California Association of REALTORS® and others. It has also authored several of its own studies including its annual MLS Technology Survey, Mid-Year Technology Update, Transaction Management Adoption Study and many others. The company provides strategic planning, research, technology evaluations, RFP development, website development and communications strategies for MLSs, technology vendors and brokerages globally.