Marco Island MLS - What you need to know.

Buyer Beware!

If you're shopping for property on Marco Island, you want the best real estate information you can get, right? When you choose a website, you must be confident that you're seeing accurate listing data. It would be a catastrophe to buy a property, only to find out a better one was available but not shown.

This nightmare happens and I'll explain how. Like over 90% of buyers on Marco Island, you have started your search on the internet. You've probably combed through Zillow and Trulia. These sites have thier uses, but for serious shoppers they are nearly useless.  You realize this when you contact an agent for more information on a listing or two only to find out the home has been sold, or isn't available yet in the case of many listed foreclosures.  I recently received an inquiry on a Zillow listing. When I researched it, I discovered the condo had sold OVER A YEAR AGO! This is inexcusable and when you consider the aggregate waste of time that results from it, it's heinous. 

Most buyers realize they need a local agents website to see the actual Marco Island inventory.  But which one should you use? They all seem the same at first glance. They all seem to have the same properties listed. But, if you look closely, they actually don't.

When we build a real estate website, we have several options when it comes to listing data. I'm sure you would assume that Marco Island websites would be showing you the Marco Island MLS, but most don't. When you search for real estate on Marco Island and you see hundreds of listings pop up, you think that's all of them. In most cases, it isn't. Most agents use outside data feeds on their websites in the pursuit of more customers or lower marketing costs. These outside feeds don't show the entire Marco Island inventory. Some are missing as much as 20% of the properties for sale.

When we built BuyMarco.com, we could have used the Florida listing data feed. This feed offers thousands of properties, is inexpensive and would surely bring us an enormous number of customers.  Alternatively, we could have used the Naples MLS.  This MLS is still very large and offers us agents more potential customers and lowers our cost. We chose neither. We went with the real thing. We went with the Marco Island MLS feed - the smallest and most costly to implement. Why? It's the only one that provides our clients all of the listings on Marco Island. 

If you are seriously considering purchasing on Marco, don't be misled by Zillow, Trulia or dozens of other websites that don't deliver the true Marco Island MLS.

Sellers Should Be Concerned,Too

So far, we've only looked at this from the buyer's perspective.  Sellers should be aware of WHY all of the listings don't show up on all of the websites. If you've listed your property, you want the widest possible coverage, of course.  Put simply, you want as many eyes on your home as possible. 

Why wouldn't your Marco Island home show up on a website delivering the Naples MLS feed or some other feed?  Well, in many cases, this has to be done manually and often, it simply doesn't get done. So, like we discussed earlier, buyer's shopping on these websites won't even be aware of your home. Not really good for anybody.

In 2015, you need a tech savvy agent that understands all of the new technology and its impact on your next real estate transaction. There's a lot at stake.