Yes.. you surf the sites for hours upon hours day in and day out! You click on each home you love and fill out forms and inquire about the availability and the pricing of that to good to be true property! Only to find that multiple agents are calling you back to inform you that the home you inquired about is not actually available but they would LOVE to work with you as your buyer agent to show you other properties!
You have been "CAT FISHED"! Yes! these sites mine all county records and credit reporting agency's they advertise "pre forclosure" homes as if they are for sale and they actually assign a phantom price to the property based upon what? Maybe the mortgagors loan balance or the property tax value or some other algorithm they come up with that is not accurate.
They may also leave listings open and not close them out once they expire or are pending and sometimes you will even find listings that have closed long ago still being marketed as available. The goal of these sites is to make it appear as though they have the MOST inventory over an above any of the other real estate websites.
What you need to know is that these kinds of websites are simply MARKETING websites. They drive local buyers and sellers to their website in another state to gather your information and they SELL marketing share to advertisers and real estate agents to buy leads. They charge agents from several hundred to thousands of dollars per zip code in each market. This is how they make their money. Through advertisement and selling ad space to Real Estate agents, Lenders, and any other company that markets on the site.
This is why you will get numerous calls and emails once you put your contact into the site for information about property inquiries.
Before these companies, most people that were looking to purchase or sell their property received recommendations from family or friends and maybe saw a post card or advertisement.
If you have used these sites you will probably notice that once you decide to work with a local agent they will try to provide you with a much better search mechanism that discard off market properties and allow you to focus on those homes that are actually available for sale.
Our industry also does not use the "zestimate" as a valuation for property. We know the public uses this and it can be at times a little frustrating as it is not really accurate only a basic average of public records and some homes that may or may not have recently sold. We still do not really know for sure.
BPO (Broker Price Opinions) and appraisers typically use a "Sales Comparison Approach" to value a property, meaning that use compare the 3 most similar properties in a 2 mile radius looking for the most similar properties.
So essentially just be aware that the primary goal of these websites are to drive traffic to charge for advertising to "re route" you back to your local agent!!! Thus again silicon valley turning everyone into an "Uber" but that's a whole other blog!
If I can help you with your real estate needs or if you have any questions please let me know! Thanks for Reading!
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