Thank you so much for this information. I went through a bankruptcy in 2008 and since then my credit report has shown “included in chapter 7/never late”. I lived 55 miles (one way) from my job and my husband had filed for divorce. I moved out to be closer to my work and the payments to the mortgage company stopped. In the prior 9 years I had never been late on a payment. Oct 1 2011 was the first missed payment and we got a short sale buyer in November. The short sale will be completed on 3/31/2012. Since my credit has never been updated with any late payments and will probably not be updated with the short sale, and due to my extenuating circimstances, is it possible for me to buy again right away? My credit score is currently around 680.

Thank you

Agree with you about the current groundswell and the need to educate and inform our industry partners about our accuracy, comprehensiveness and freshness. We’ve invested many years and deep effort in the technology and relationships with the MLSs to make this happen. We talk about it a lot, but there’s certainly room to expand this important message..

Here’s my contact details if you’d ever like to connect direct. julie.reynolds@move.com. Thanks again and c ya later.

Julie

There’s a justifiable growing storm on this issue and more and more brokerages are going to pull their listings from aggregators. In order for Realtor.com not to get lumped in with the likes of Zillow and Trulia (yuck), a little more transparency on methodology would put the issue to bed. I’m not talking about sharing trade secrets but rather clarifying. It may be unintentional but in the provided links and other press releases I’ve been through, this omission is suspicious (perhaps unfair but then again, we don’t know what you know).

I’m going to edit this and try to find a real junk aggregator site instead of yours (any suggestions?) but I’d love that answer. Also, as the Vice President of Public Relations and Social Media at Move, Inc., you might want to add a backlink to Realtor.com at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_listing_service in the external links and references section.

Thanks again and take care!

Regards,

Charles Dailey

The listings that display on Realtor.com come from more than 900 MLSs. So, if a property is for sale and it’s listed on an MLS, it will display on Realtor.com free of charge.

85% of the listings on Realtor.com are updated directly by an MLS every 15 minutes and the rest — 15% as you point out — are updated every one to 24 hours. That means no listing on Realtor.com goes more than 24 hours without being updated directly by an MLS. And if you do the math…the listings on Realtor.com are updated about 96 times per day.

So, when you take into consideration that Realtor.com displays property listings from more than 900+ MLS for free, and every listing is updated every 15 minutes to 24 hours per day…it’s easy to understand why Realtor.com is considered the most accurate, most comprehensive and freshest online real estate marketplace available today.

Thanks again Charles for joining the conversation. We really appreciate the opportunity to set the record straight…in a New York minute!

Julie
Realtor.com

Thank you for the detail on the methods Realtor.com uses to keep its site as valuable as possible. There’s no doubt Realtor.com is superior to Zillow and Trulia. If their national real estate listing reach were like a cellular service map, they’d definitely be Verizon and Zillow would definitely be AT&T.

In the link you provided, Curt Beardsley stated, “we update over 85% (almost 3 million listings) of the listings on Realtor.com, every 15 minutes directly from our 933+ MLS partners. That’s 96 updates per listing per day, directly from the listing source – the MLSs. The rest are updated every 1 to 24 hours.” That’s an excellent start. But here’s what I want to know. What about the other 15%? Are they totally omitted from Realtor.com or are they brought into the site in a different way? If they are brought into the site in a different way, specifically what way is that and is the information on those as accurate the other 85% that you have on your site?

Here’s my point; if a consumer has the option of using a feature rich site where they can know for sure that they’re getting all of the listings with a statistically negligible amount of data errors then they should use that in lieu of anything that may have a certain percentage of the listings being drawn in from MLS sources as opposed to all and/or a higher than statistically negligible data error rate.

If I’m wrong about the 15% of non-MLS sourced listings on your site and their data accuracy is statistically equal to the other 85% then by all means, show me and I’ll take Realtor.com out of this post in a New York minute.

Respectfully,

Charles Dailey

Accuracy and Comprehensiveness – Listings on Realtor.com are not syndicated to the site. They are sent to our site by our 900+ MLS partners every day. 82% of the 900+ MLSs that send their broker member listings to Realtor.com are updated directly by the MLS every 15 minutes and the rest are updated every one to 24 hours. Listings displayed on Realtor.com are MLS fresh.

Listings on Realtor.com – All listings on Realtor.com display for free and include important info and pictures – also displayed for free – so millions of local and not so local buyers can consider that property 24/7 on their desktop or mobile device. If a broker would like additional marketing support, we follow a traditional subscription-based eCommerce model that offers an array of industry-friendly advertising choices that respect the broker’s rights as the content owner. If a broker isn’t interested in a marketing program, they can easily opt out or not opt in. It’s their choice and we respect their rights as the content owners.

Reaching Potential Buyers – Agents and brokers tell us all the time that their sellers want the greatest level of exposure possible to potential buyers. They don’t want to miss any opportunity to connect with the right buyer…a local buyer or a buyer from another community. So from a seller’s perspective, it probably doesn’t make sense to turn off an audience of 17 million consumers, especially if they want to sell their home quickly and at the highest possible price. And what’s great about Realtor.com, it’s a site that appeals to both local buyers looking for local properties AND interested buyers from other communities.

Syndication – Listings that display on Realtor.com are not syndicated to the site. If a broker or MLS would like to syndicate their listings to a third party site other than Realtor.com, we recommend going with ListHub. It’s the largest syndicator of real estate listings on the market today. ListHub updates the listings syndicated on their network every day, and provides performance reports to brokers so they can fine tune their marketing plans and demonstrate the value they bring to the selling process to their clients. It’s a transparent, nuetral and dependable solution for many brokers and MLSs.

Here’s a few links to several recent posts on this and other related topics that may be of interest to you and your community.

http://lockbox.realtor.com/realtor-stats/realtor-com-the-industry-friendly-site/

http://www.move.com/trends/industry-friendly-marketplace-focused-on-consumer-to-realtor-connections-and-accurate-listing-content/

Julie Reynolds
Realtor.com

HUD and/or FHA has not announced a date at this point…only that the legislation for the increase passed and the increase is eminent. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a change as early as this spring. Nonetheless, if you are an FHA borrower, it would be in your best interest to close on your loan earlier, rather than later. Who wants to pay extra mortgage insurance, right?

Along with that, the bureacrats were also able to sneek in another FHA change that will decrease the percentage of closing costs that a seller can pay on behalf of the buyer. To learn more about this, go to: http://iloanminnesota.com/2012/01/22/fha-seller-paid-closing-costs-reduction-announced/.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions!
612-363-1106
sherri@iloanhomemortgage.com

Thanks for your help!

My real estate agent advised me to buy a new home first before doing a short sale on my existing home. Medical hardship (difficulty climbing upstairs due to a previous knee surgery) will be the main reason for the planned short sale. My questions are: (1) Am I assured that my Lender will approve a short sale with a new home purchase? (2) Is there a possibility that my Lender will place a lien on the new home? (3) What is the best course of action considering I can afford to buy a new home in cash. Purchase a new home first before doing a short sale or immediately after a short sale gets approved? (4) I recently withdrew huge amounts of funds from my Savings account in the last week of November 2011 so if the Lender will request for the last 2 months of bank statements by March 2012 (planned short sale), it won’t no longer appear. Am I in a valid position not to disclose or declare the withdrawn funds anymore to the lender?

I’ve never heard of investors “taking back” an approval on the basis that someone continued to make payments. This isn’t to say that it couldn’t happen. Lenders and nutcases.