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SW FL Guide > Using this site > Saving progress & Alternate Search Options

How to find the EXACT right home using this site!

Tips & Suggestions on how to BEST conduct searches for Southwest Florida homes for sale

Staying updated

This has also been made a very simple process. When you register by saving a property or a search, there’s just a few questions to fill out. Based on those, I’ll be happy to keep you updated as additional good considerations come available.

The Inside Scoop: Just how accurate and complete is this info?

I’m sure any prospective buyer viewing any Real Estate website is very curious to know just how up-to-the-minute the data actually is. Is it 100% complete, or are there properties missing from that list? And which site really is the best for searching?  Is it one of the big national ones like Realtor.com or Zillow, or a more localized one, such as this?

The way websites like mine work is via a data feed called IDX. It provides the data from the various MLS systems, and is routinely updated. By everyone agreeing to allow their listings to appear on each other’s sites, it creates plenty of exposure for the listing, better ensuring the success of that property selling. The problem is that a small percentage of brokerages choose not to participate in this, and you won’t see those occasional missing properties on select websites!  Why anybody would list with such a brokerage is beyond me, but it’s typically because they are unaware of how it actually works.

Many websites including some of the huge national ones and small individual ones also leave some pretty old data posted- some ridiculously so!  Some even say the data was refreshed 16 minutes ago- but still advertise a property that went under contract weeks ago.  I guess the idea of being able to say “well that one is gone, but let me tell you about...” is the motivation behind a lot of them.  That and some of those big sites make the vast percentage of their money by selling referrals or advertising space and leads to Real Estate agents. However, I consider all of that to be a disservice to actual buyers, so I won’t participate in any such tactics. I’ve designed my website so that every day it’s set to discard any properties that have gone pending.  Therefore, among all the actual websites out there, it’s the best I have yet encountered.

The one limitation to that is the “garbage in, garbage out” effect.  Meaning that the data is only as good as what’s been put into the database.  With numerous listings put in and updated by agents of, let’s say, various abilities to do their job well, if they neglect to update the status of a property to properly show it’s gone pending for, say, 3 extra days, the database won’t know any differently, and neither will I or my website! That’s a very small fraction of 1% though, so it’s rarely an issue.

Is there any no-compromise PERFECT solution?

Yes, simply contact me at 239-603-6100 and I can set up the exact search right in the actual MLS system(s).  It’s truly the best of them all, and it’s right from the source.  It will be 100% of all available properties, it’s in exact real time, it has all possible search criteria, and it can update you very quickly.  You’ll be amongst the very first to know when just the right property gets listed.

This option requires me setting it up manually on your behalf, but that’s no problem, so just give me a call to arrange it!

While this concludes the info on how to best search for properties, there’s still have plenty of useful information to pass along to you.  Next up, let’s go over how property taxes work in this region.

continued on the next page “Property Taxes in Southwest Florida” >>