Study Finds Most Online Home Seekers Searching Through Incomplete and
Inaccurate Listings
Representative, Three-Market Survey Shows Popular Real Estate Search
Engines Don't List Many Homes Available for Sale, With Comprehensiveness
as Low as Eight Percent
SAN FRANCISCO (Business Wire EON/PRWEB ) August 26, 2008 --
A real estate industry study released today shows that most popular
consumer real estate search engines, including Trulia, Zillow, Google
and Yahoo!, offer home seekers only a small fraction of the homes
actually available on the market - and that many of the listings are
inaccurate or out of date. Real estate searches on these popular sites
in three sample markets -- Miami, Dallas and San Diego -- failed to
provide users with as much as 92 percent of available listings in their
home searches.
The study, commissioned by Roost.com
and conducted by the WAV Group, points out the stark contrasts between
different online property search methods available today and concluded
that the most accurate source of listing information is the local
Multiple Listing Service (MLS). The WAV Group specifically researched
how popular consumer real estate search sites including Trulia, Google
and Yahoo!, among others -- which aggregate listings from a variety of
third-party sources -- stack up to sites like Roost.com, which are
enabled by the MLS. The MLS is the real estate industry standard
database for sharing information on local homes for sale and is
available only to licensed real estate agents and brokers; all the
listings on the MLS are derived from local agents and brokers. To serve
the needs of agents wishing to make MLS property search available to
consumers, MLS boards nationwide have deployed a standard called
Internet Data Exchange, or IDX.
The three cities were chosen as the best sample markets to test the IDX
model versus aggregator models. Roost.com, through unique relationships
with real estate brokers and local MLS boards, can also offer IDX data
to consumers across the nation. In fact, Roost is the only search engine
online today that offers consumers access to all MLS data in covered
markets as well as for sale by owner and new construction listings.
Top-line findings in the detailed study showed some aggregator sites
with accuracy rates as low as eight percent. In Dallas, for instance,
Google fared the best among the aggregators for listing accuracy by
displaying 56 out of 81 possible listings, or 69 percent accuracy. In
San Diego, Yahoo! was missing 70 out of the 76 listings found in the
MLS, or listing accuracy of just eight percent. Trulia and Zillow also
had mixed results from city to city. In Dallas and Miami, they both
displayed about 50 percent of the listings.
By contrast, researchers established that searchable housing information
on IDX-powered broker websites, like Roost.com, is the most accurate
public home search available - usually 96 percent to 98 percent
accurate. The small percentage of differences occurs because IDX data is
typically refreshed once a day. Any home that gets sold, newly listed,
expired, or has had a price change gets updated within 24 hours.
In each market, “accuracy”
was defined as a percentage of listings on a site that matched the MLS.
“This study is important because it shows that
many people looking for their dream home have had much of their time
wasted on having to search through screen after screen of bad data. It
really is a case of buyer beware,” said Alex
Chang, CEO of Roost. “Roost.com users, on the
other hand, can be confident that they're seeing the best, most
up-to-date listings available. It's very simple - access to accurate
data arms you with the information you need for the biggest purchase
you'll ever make. When you're ready to take that first step toward
buying a home, we're now more confident than ever that Roost.com is the
site to trust.”
ABOUT THE STUDY
The study evaluated real estate listings for single family homes in
three cities, Dallas, Miami and San Diego, and compared three methods of
acquiring property search information: results provided by local
Realtors; information from Internet Data Exchange-powered MLS Web sites;
and listings from advertising-driven Web sites including Trulia, Google,
Yahoo! and others.
Data was normalized across all the subject sites to provide an “apples
to apples” comparison. The search criteria for
all sites were identical: single family residential homes for sale and
homes with exactly three bedrooms and exactly two bathrooms. The search
was performed on each site on the same day and in as short amount of
time as possible, closely mirroring typical consumer behavior. Price
points for home searches were identical across all sites as well:
Dallas, $250,000-300,000; Miami: $450,000-500,000; and San Diego,
$300,000-350,000. These criteria were selected to narrow the study to a
statistically significant and manageable sampling of homes for sale
within each market. At the time of the study, there were more than
35,000 homes for sale in the sample cities.
“We were careful to tease apart the data, to
be sure we were making an apples-to-apples comparison of the listings in
these markets,” said Victor Lund, founding
partner of WAV Group. “The data here clearly
show, as they did in a national study we conducted earlier this year,
that a site based on information from a local MLS will give consumers a
more accurate picture of what's available in a local market. In
comparison to IDX-powered Web sites like Roost or the MLS listings in
Dallas, Miami or San Diego, sites like Google, Yahoo!, Trulia and Zillow
are still struggling to collect a comparable, comprehensive data set of
accurate listings.”
HOW ROOST WORKS
Roost is a blazing-fast search engine that sits atop a network of IDX,
or Internet Data Exchange, sites. IDX is the national data sharing
standard among all real estate brokers. Most popular real estate search
sites are listing aggregators, and unlike IDX sites powered by the MLS,
these sites get their listings for properties
for sale from a variety of sources including brokers, magazine
publishers, newspapers, other software companies, and sometimes, even
each other. The result is often inaccurate and incomplete data, leading
to frustration for home buyers. With Roost, users can create custom
search profiles with simple filtering controls to sort by price range,
square footage, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, neighborhood, school
district, new or resale properties and more - even which homes have
granite countertops or pools.
Additionally, Roost's platform and traffic-sharing approach with brokers
helps agents form new connections with potential clients, serving
as an important ally for real estate agents struggling to stay afloat in
one of the most difficult housing markets in history.
Roost recently announced the launch of its service in San Francisco,
Seattle and New England and earned the Innovator Award for Most
Innovative Technology from Inman News, the leading source of independent
real estate news and opinion for the industry.
About Roost, Inc.
Roost is an innovative online real estate platform that combines a
network of individual real estate broker Web sites with a comprehensive
search engine. Roost offers new search technology, an intuitive, visual
interface and the most comprehensive property listings to help users
find all homes for sale and find them fast. The company works
collaboratively with Multiple Listing Service (MLS) boards and real
estate brokers in each region to provide up-to-date, accurate data.
Roost.com currently lists homes and
condos for sale in thousands of other markets across the nation
including Chicago, Phoenix,
Houston, Miami,
Atlanta, Boston,
St. Louis, Denver,
Philadelphia, Portland,
Arizona, California,
Florida, Georgia,
Illinois, Massachusetts,
Texas, Virginia,
and more, ensuring the results
for each local search are complete. Roost was awarded the 2008 Innovator
Award for Most Innovative Technology from Inman News, the leading source
of independent real estate news and opinion for the industry. Founded in
2007, Roost.com is based in San Francisco, Calif. To start your home
search, visit http://www.roost.com.
EDITORS NOTE: For a copy of the WAV Group study, please contact
Elizabeth Govea at (415) 694-6718. A downloadable graphic of listing
accuracy by market is available at: http://blog.roost.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/online-accuracy-miami
-dallas-san-diego.jpg (Due to its length, this URL may need to be
copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the
extra space if one exists.)
Release Summary:
A real estate industry study released today shows that most popular
consumer real estate search engines, including Trulia, Zillow, Google
and Yahoo!, offer home seekers only a small fraction of the homes
actually available on the market - and that many of the listings are
inaccurate or out of date. Real estate searches on these popular sites
in three sample markets -- Miami, Dallas and San Diego -- failed to
provide users with as much as 92 percent of available listings in their
home searches.
Keyword Tags:
condos for sale, condos sale, homes for sale, online real estate,
properties for sale, properties sale, real estate for sale, real estate
market, real estate online, real estate search, real estate search
engines, search real estate
See the original story at: http://eon.businesswire.com/releases/roost/real_estate/prweb1250114.htm
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