How Real Estate Listings Get onto Websites?
As real estate agents, we hear these questions and statements
all of the time:
Why can’t I see pictures on this listing?
Why hasn’t my listing shown up on XXX site yet?
I want to go see this house. What do you mean it sold last
year and isn’t active? This website says it’s for sale.
Why can I see this listing on XXX site and not on XXX site?
So, how do listings get onto each of the many websites?
Real estate agents put the listing in their local Multiple
Listings Service (MLS), once the listing has been submitted to the MLS, it is
what is called syndicated out to other websites. The listings magically appear
on the brokerage websites and other sites such as Zillow, Trulia and
Realtor.com.
Every independent website gets updated differently. Some
websites are updated one time in 24 hours while some are updated minutes after
a change in the MLS. Once in a while a
listing doesn’t get updated on the websites. The status shows up as active when
it has been sold or has been removed from the market.
If agents don’t post pictures or only post a few pictures in
the MLS, that is what gets syndicated out to all of the other websites. So when
you see a listing with only a handful of pictures that is because the listing agent
only added a handful of pictures.
For these reasons, I tell all of my clients/customers to contact me if they see a property on a different website that they like. I don’t mind them searching on other websites as some sites are better for searching than others. It’s just some websites aren’t as updated as others.
If you ever have any questions, please reach out to me!
Happy to help!
