Tribune uses Berwyn for online comparison

[Ted]

 
  Here is an article from today's Trbiune that used Berwyn as a testing ground for comparing real estate sites.  One thing I noticed was the one site provided information on student to teacher ratios and expenditures per student as well as political party affiliations.


http://www.chicagotribune.com/classified/realestate/news/chi-re-internet-search-0810aug10,0,4485323.story

  Screen tests
  Even among the most visited realty sites, few get 2 thumbs up for utility

By Mary Umberger | Special to the Chicago Tribune
August 10, 2008

   Last year, 84 percent of American home buyers used the Internet in shopping. So says the National Association of Realtors. But what the trade group didn't say was how to go about it—more specifically where to start. That's where we think we can help.

We took the most popular sites based on June visits, according to two firms that measure Internet traffic, for a test drive. Over two days in July, we asked each of 11 chosen to run a hypothetical search for listings for three-bedroom, single-family homes in Berwyn, a suburb chosen at random. Their findings ranged from 53 to 487.

   In general, some of the sites wowed us with maps, data and detailed listings and let us tailor our searches umpteen ways. Others seemed more focused on putting us into the hands of a real-estate agent or mortgage broker. Required registrations can be slow and pointedly nosey. Some buried useful tools behind "advanced search" links instead of displaying them out front. Some gave us lots of listings with little detail.

  Because "utility" is totally subjective, we grouped our findings in three tiers, according to number of listings, how useful or novel the sites' features seemed to be and how much/how little personal information they wanted.

   The top group—big numbers or lots of helpful information or both—are Realtor.com, Remax.com and Trulia.com. In the middle are Cold wellBanker.com, Homegain.com, Realestate.yahoo.com and Zillow .com. In the third tier—for reasons that ranged from too few listings to too little detail—are Century21.com, Homes.com, ZipRealty.com, and the real-estate pages of AOL.com and MSN.com.

ColdwellBanker.com: Want to see its listings? That's all you get on an initial search—62 homes.

But if you open one of them, you can click a link that offers a stew of listings from area brokers—395 up to 404 if you register.

Most come with lots of photos. Other data—income, demographics—take a little searching but there's a lot of local information here. An interactive map pinpoints nearby listings.

HomeGain.com: The "About" section here makes no secret of the site's function as a lead generator—that is, putting real estate agents in contact with consumers. (Due diligence: HomeGain is part of Classified Ventures, a joint venture of several newspaper companies, including Tribune Co., publisher of the Chicago Tribune.) We entered our search criteria, and HomeGain put us into Chicago's Baird & Warner site.

But to go further, we had to complete a four-section questionnaire that was the most detailed among these sites—it asked for phone and e-mail information; whether you're working with an agent; whether you've been approved for a mortgage, etc.

After what seemed like a lot of clicking, the Baird & Warner site turned up 271 properties. There's mapping from Google.

Realestate.yahoo.com: It found 201 properties with three-plus bedrooms. Asking for foreclosures and new construction raised it to 204.

However, you can't separate single-family listings from townhouses, condos and the like. The Yahoo Inc. search engine's real-estate arm also allows the user to map local amenities (such as restaurants and shopping) and comparable sales, plugging in records from Zillow.com. Education data included expenditures per student and teacher-to-student ratios; demographic information on Berwyn contained household income along with political affiliations, so you can gauge the likelihood of sparring with your neighbors in November.

The Yahoo Answers feature tackles such consumer questions as how long an FHA loan takes to close or how to research whether someone died in the house.

Zillow.com: The popular home-valuation site offers for-sale listings, and it turned up 341 three-plus bedroom homes, though individual listings were lean. The site is loaded with gadgetry, such as mapping the listed homes via Microsoft Virtual Earth; the maps also link smoothly to homes for sale in nearby communities. Its voyeuristic "Make Me Move" function allows people who don't have their homes on the market to specify a minimum offer that might get them to change their minds.

Mortgage shopping? Zillow allows users to anonymously enter personal information to shop for rates and terms and claims the anonymity has drawn a strong response. Zillow's Real Estate Guide is a wiki feature that readers can edit.

Century21.com: Our search turned up 53 three-bedroom houses, all of them from Century21 and Coldwell Banker, its sister brand.

This site lets you specify home style, such as Victorian, bungalow, etc., as well as to search a specified distance from Berwyn. Demographics are shown in visually interesting pie charts.

Homes.com: Up came 68 three-bedroom houses. One easily accessible tool was a link to listings in such nearby towns as Cicero, Lyons and Oak Park. Charts and maps offer demographic and school information. There's a link to foreclosure properties, but getting real details on these requires a subscription to RealtyTrac.com, a foreclosure-data specialist.

Realestate.aol.com: America Online's realty channel listed 108 properties in Berwyn when we checked the boxes asking to see all three-bedroom homes—existing, new construction, for sale by owner and foreclosure properties. Mapquest pinpointed their locations.

Each listing has headings for square footage, number of bathrooms, local schools, etc., though many were blank. For foreclosure properties, finding out more requires entering personal information to get a free trial subscription to its Bargain Homes Network. A separate feature offers demographic and home-sales data for the town.

Realestate.msn.com: If the listings look familiar, it's because the Microsoft site links to Realtor.com, so we got the same 369 that it provides directly.

It also sends you to RealtyTrac for foreclosures and to Move.com, an affiliate of Realtor.com, for new homes and rentals. For neighborhood demographics, you'll be whisked to Yahoo.com. This is an aggregation of real-estate news and information, with some of the latter from Bankrate.com.

ZipRealty.com: It turned up 276 homes in a spartan listing:

Each property garnered one line, specifying the number of bedrooms and baths, lot size, square footage, price and reduction, if any, and whether pictures were available. To see more—photos, neighborhood information—you must register with name, phone and e-mail. The site uses Microsoft Virtual Earth to map the location of each listing.

[tony la]

Actually an independant company called HITWIZE has been doing studies for sometime now.  Here is the actual list. 

[Shoops]

One of the other things the article didn't mention was that you can only view that company's listings, when you search through a broker website. You have to register your name and email address in order to see all the listings in that area. That's the reason why the findings were from 53 to 487.

[Vic0218]

Part of the issue (or difficulty) for those looking to buy homes, is that NAR (National Association of Realtors) had a longstanding agreement with brokers/agents that precluded them from advertising thier listings on any type of 'national or data aggregation' site. Add in the complexity of sites having to manage data from multiple MLS providers, who have their own agreements w/ brokers and such. And, brokers/agents want their listings to appear together, not part of a wider bucket of what's available. It goes on and on...

This makes it very difficult for the average home buyer to find a search site/engine that is listing agnostic (in other words, the consumer has no means to see ALL listings from a single search source that span all brokers, listing types, etc.). Combine that with the issue of listing data being frequently outdated, it is very hard to know what is actually available until you are working with an agent. So sites focus on creating non-listing content (like school data, maps) to attract consumers, but their products are usually built to funnel consumers into the hands of agents/brokers since those are the folks that control the real lists of homes for sales.

At the moment, my personal insight for home owners looking to get a general sense of what's available is to use Chicago Tribune's (or any local newspaper in a market) real estate site. They've done a nice job aggregating listings available from different brokers, MLS sources and FSBO. It also includes all classified as well as online listings (so you get a combo of what is in print and on the internet). But, you'll probably end up having to work with an agent unless you stick with the FSBO ads.

[Shoops]

Part of the issue (or difficulty) for those looking to buy homes, is that NAR (National Association of Realtors) had a longstanding agreement with brokers/agents that precluded them from advertising thier listings on any type of 'national or data aggregation' site. Add in the complexity of sites having to manage data from multiple MLS providers, who have their own agreements w/ brokers and such. And, brokers/agents want their listings to appear together, not part of a wider bucket of what's available. It goes on and on...

This makes it very difficult for the average home buyer to find a search site/engine that is listing agnostic (in other words, the consumer has no means to see ALL listings from a single search source that span all brokers, listing types, etc.). Combine that with the issue of listing data being frequently outdated, it is very hard to know what is actually available until you are working with an agent. So sites focus on creating non-listing content (like school data, maps) to attract consumers, but their products are usually built to funnel consumers into the hands of agents/brokers since those are the folks that control the real lists of homes for sales.

At the moment, my personal insight for home owners looking to get a general sense of what's available is to use Chicago Tribune's (or any local newspaper in a market) real estate site. They've done a nice job aggregating listings available from different brokers, MLS sources and FSBO. It also includes all classified as well as online listings (so you get a combo of what is in print and on the internet). But, you'll probably end up having to work with an agent unless you stick with the FSBO ads.

You're right when you said that you can't get "all" the listings, when searching online. What happened over the past few years was that Brokers from other companies all made an agreement to allow their listings to be advertised through other company's website. These are called IDX listings. There are a "few" brokers that didn't agree to this. You go to a company's website and you put in criteria for a 2 bedroom ranch in Berwyn. You'll get all the listings that match your criteria, from that company only. If it's a franchise company, then you'll get all the listings from the various franchises. If you want to search for more homes, you have to register your name and email information before you can do that. Then you'll see, in small print that the listing was provided by the other company. Now if there are homes that match your criteria through a broker that didn't agree to IDX listings, you won't be able to see the listing at all.

[tony la]

Schoops,  how many brokers don't agree with IDX listings?

[Shoops]

Schoops,  how many brokers don't agree with IDX listings?

We just resigned our yearly agreement and they told me that one of the bigger Coldwell Banker offices up north doesn't agree, plus a handful of other offices.