The Press Democrat: Home Buyers Gain Edge Online

By Kevin McCallum

In highly competitive real estate market, buyers find 24-hour access to agent's once-private listings.In the mad scramble of today's real estate market, buyers are demanding faster and fuller access to new listings, and agents are finding ways to give it to them.

Anyone with Internet access has been able to search for free filtered versions of the local multiple listing service, or MLS. But today's savvy buyers, under intense pressure in the highly competitive market, are demanding the latest, most up-to-date information available -- information that once was available only to agents.

"Everyone wants things instantaneously," said Suzanne O'Brien of Prudential California Realty in Santa Rosa.

If a new listing is added to the MLS at 10 a.m., buyers want to know about it in minutes, not hours or days. They worry that any delay could cause their dream home to slip through their fingers.

"Things are really moving that fast out there," said Fred Stoufer, manager of Creative Property Services in Winsdor. "If a buyer is ready to move, and they are working with a Realtor who's really busy, by the time they print out new listings for you, three, four, five houses could pass them by."

The numbers bear that out. Homes in Sonoma County stayed on the market an average of 17 days in March, compared to 30 in 2004 and 47 in 2003. Studies have also shown 74 percent of people begin their search for real estate online.

Partly in response to this frenetic market, more agents are using software that gives their clients greater control over searching the latest MLS listings themselves, allowing buyers and sellers to search 24 hours a day while freeing up agents to focus on other parts of their business.

"They can't be holding my hand all day," said Stan Deen, who last month bought a home in Santa Rosa's Montecito Heights neighborhood that he found using an MLS search engine. "This just puts the information in the hands of the users."

Deen, a client of O'Brien and her partner Eileen O'Keefe, used a program called CleanOffer that gave him much of the access to MLS listings that brokers enjoy. Using the software, he found the new home moments after its price was reduced from $1.2 million to $969,000.

Deen, a psychiatrist at Kaiser Permanente, immediately called O'Brien and asked her to meet him there. After viewing the home -- and its 180-degree view of the city -- he asked her to help him write his ultimately successful offer.

He's also using the MLS access to help him sell his current home on Proctor Drive in Santa Rosa's McDonald Historic District. He has tracked home sales in the neighborhood, helping him fine-tune his $829,000 asking price, he said.

Searching the MLS online is nothing new. A number of Web sites, including Realtor.com and Greathomes.org, as well as local newspaper sites, allow surfers to dig through thousands of MLS listings. The Web sites of individual agents and brokerages are another source.

But brokers say the information on these MLS search sites available to the public is rarely complete. There often is a delay between the time a listing hits the local MLS, called the Bay Area Real Estate Information System, and when it goes online at a public MLS site.

Listings also can be withheld from the public sites by brokers concerned about their sellers' privacy. Addresses often are stripped from free listings.

O'Brien said there are good reasons that not all MLS information is instantly made public. The MLS is a private, broker-sponsored network, and much of the information there is for brokers only, such as private phone numbers of sellers, whether the house is vacant and even alarm codes, she said.

CleanOffer's users don't have access to such personal data, but the listings do include addresses and are updated quickly, said David Faudman, CEO of the San Francisco-based CleanOffer Inc.

CleanOffer has a license with MLS for a complete database of listings because it is not a tool for the general public. Only clients of agents who pay for the service are granted access to the password-protected Web site, he said.

About 120 agents in Sonoma County have signed up for the service, and even more in Marin County, where the company started, Faudman said.

While some agents are concerned such services will make people less dependent on them, Stoufer finds the opposite is true.

"I'm more connected with the client than I could be by just sending them listings," he said.

The Press Democrat
Read Original Article Here
http://pressdemocrat.com
Published: Tuesday, May 3, 2005