Are you sometimes frustrated by online search
Since almost everyone uses the Internet to search for almost everything these days, it seems frustrating sometimes when you either can't get accurate information or the search portal you're using isn't easy to navigate.
My wife might buy a car so I was looking online and it was amazing to me how miserable the search experience was on the Charleston car dealers websites that I visited. I was trying for a certain model but the website insisted on displaying different models as if my request didn't matter. And when I clicked for the online price, it required me to register with my email address. So I guess I'll have to drive over to a few dealerships to get the info we need to make a decision.
And Charleston real estate search might not be any better depending on what website you are searching on.
There have always been two schools of thought regarding registration and I believe in no registration required; by freely providing the information you're looking for, if and when you are ready to buy or sell a home in Charleston, I hope you'll contact me to consider using me as your Charleston real estate agent.
Others want to capture leads, period.
Now if you don't happen to use a local Charleston real estate agent's website to search the Charleston MLS with an IDX feed and you find yourself on one of the large national websites, what can you expect to find in terms of accuracy and ease of use.
I just searched Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com to find out and here are the results compared to the Charleston MLS.
Zip code 29464 Mount Pleasant
Zip code 29483 Summerville
The inquiry that I get most often from online house hunters is whether a home for sale is still available. Unfortunately, when a home is under contract but the contingencies have not been satisfied (home inspection, financing, appraisal, 3rd party lender approval, etc.,), Charleston MLS rules require the home continue to be listed as for sale. Only when a home moves into pending status will it no longer be found when you search but most Charleston real estate agents don't bother with pending and simply change it to sold after closing.
And another reason for the discrepancy in the number of listings from the Charleston MLS to the other three search portals is that a small portion of sellers and agents don't want their listings to be available on syndicated sites. But the bigger problem is that once homes are no longer for sale, the listing must be removed because it isn't automatic on either Zillow or Trulia (it is on Realtor.com) and Trulia must have lots of forgotten listings based on the over sized number that their site shows available for sale.
As to ease of use, I probably am biased but for all the touted technology, I didn't think that any of the search portals was that great compared to the IDX feed that I offer on my website. Happy house hunting!