Do You Rely On Online Property Listings?
How much do you tend to trust what you read on the Internet regarding property listings?
If you tend to swear by that stuff, you should try online property listings the next time you need to buy a house. Suffice it to say, it should be a humbling experience.
The last time that the housing market was at all healthy was before the recession. Back in 2007, it already sounds like a hundred years ago, doesn’t it, when people wanted to buy a house, they would look at actual property listings in the papers. Online property listings weren’t that popular.
When hopeful buyers today see that the Internet is how things are done in this day and age, they jump on board, note down the properties that interest them, and right away get their estate agent to set up appointments with the owners.
On average, about one out of two properties that people look up on the Internet usually turn out to be erroneous listings. Often, they have long since been sold, and no one bothered to update those listings.
Sometimes, it isn’t just a case of neglectfulness. It can just be poor attention to detail and poor quality fact checking. A listing can say that there is a garage when there isn’t; it can say that there are walk in wardrobes when there are not, it can misquote the size of a property as well. Sometimes, they aren’t mistakes, they’re just lies. Simply put, there is pretty much nothing about the property listings you catch online that you can trust.
Property Listings On The Internet
The only way to take any consolation from this would be to understand that it’s nothing personal, it’s in the nature of the Internet that information should be cheap and accuracy, poorly valued. There are all kinds of reasons why estate agents do this. They want lots of listings out there so that their name comes up often. When a potential buyer calls about a house that’s already sold, the estate agent still likes the fact that he’s on the phone with someone with money to buy a house with. He feels he can take it from there. As for misquoting the features of the house, it’s something everyone does, hoping to get away with it, no matter what area of business it is.
Buyers like online property listings because they usually get to see how long a property has been on the market without being sold. There’s nothing trustworthy about this “days on the market” number. estate agents commonly take a property off the market once it’s been there for three months and re list it the following week. Still, online listings happen to be a new source of information. They could be useful once they work all the kinks out. For now, the old-fashioned method you’ve always relied on forever, should still hold you in good stead.
Having said all of that the Internet does provide the fastest way to get real estate listings that are reasonably up to date. The accuracy of the information all depends on how often the estate agent updates or refreshes their web page. The homes for sale listings directory may or may not be up to date by design or purpose. For example if an estate agent has a very attractively priced property they may wish to keep that advertised even though an offer has been accepted.
Property Listings – The Act of Parliament
The reasoning for this can be justified as the realtor works for the client that is selling the property and not for the buyer, therefore the estate agent can reasonably state that they are acting in the best interests of the vendor of the property by keeping the property seemingly available until exchange of contracts.
In the UK the Property Misdescriptions Act 1991 has attempted to put a stop to this kind of misleading information but it has only been succeesful to a point.
Therfore the heading of this article was do you rely on property listings, well if you do you should always check the information out with the estate agent.