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I decided to see how well my house came up on realtor.com when I searched for specific features. First I tried the basics: location, price range, size of house and lot. All went well.
Then I began trying other features, one at a time. It came up when I searched for fireplace, horse property, and garage, but not when I searched for hardwood floors, den/office, or central air.
I brought this to my Realtor's attention so it could be remedied. I really don't want our house to be left out when someone is looking for hardwood floors or central air.
I just got a response from the secretary, saying that they have no control over this. Can that be true? I figured that the Realtor goes through a list and checks all the boxes that apply, and that's what the search uses. So which is it? How much control does the Realtor have?
It depends on what search parameters are available in your local MLS system, and which ones are actually transferred to Realtor.com. Your agent may not know which parameters are transferred, and yes, does not have control over it. But you should be able to check with your agent as to what is searchable in your local MLS. Those search parameters will be available to other local agents with buyers looking for properties.
Location: Mokelumne Hill, CA & El Pescadero, BCS MX.
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I too have no idea which fields from our local MLS are uploaded to R.com. I doubt that anyone associated with our MLS has any idea either. I think if we were even able to ask anyone at R.com what gives, they would tell us it's proprietary.
On the other hand, I think the main purpose of any advertising is to pique interest in the property enough for a prospective buyer to pick up the phone or send an email asking for more details. Too much information can make a potential buyer "disqualify" themselves. In your example, hardwood floors might be a desirable feature to someone, but the other attributes of the property might overwhelm the desire for hardwood floors. Or the opposite. Perhaps someone want's carpet instead of hardwood floors. Lots of carpet has been laid over hardwood floors over the years.
The adage that "Buyer's are liars" has yours truly as one of it's perfect examples. In looking for my first home, I told my agent I wanted an acre of land that I could build a house on. I bought a 1200sf new home on a zero lot line lot of only 5000 sf!
I too have no idea which fields from our local MLS are uploaded to R.com. I doubt that anyone associated with our MLS has any idea either. I think if we were even able to ask anyone at R.com what gives, they would tell us it's proprietary.
This is what I was going to say. We can enter the data fields that our MLS allows. What fields, Realtor.com actually pulls from individual MLS's varies. MLS's that have RETS pull that information I am sure. MLS's that still have FTP probably don't. There is a lot of behind the scenes technology that pulls data all over the place that individual agents have very little to no control over.
As others have said, we don't necessarily go on to these websites and start entering the data. Instead, the data for these sites is often pulled from multiple sources one is usually the local MLS. Some sites, you can go in and do some editing but Realtor.com has very few things that can be changed by an agent.
Your agent might want to give the Realtor.com customer service line a call to see if they can help. I've had luck with other websites getting things changed if I give them a ring.
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