Buying a home, especially for the first time, can accompany many unanswered questions and confusion. Buying a home requires things like persistence, patience, dedication and you must need to know about the difference between MLS and IDX. Another vital thing that’s extremely helpful when buying a house is ensuring you’ve got a top real estate agent in California performing on your behalf!
Izabella Lipetski is known as the best real estate agent in California. If you are looking for the best realtor in East Bay California you are at the right place. This blog is the representation of Izabella lipetski about the challenges she faced while helping a client buy his dream house.
Difference between MLS and IDX
MLS
MLS, which stands for Multiple Listing Service, is the aggregate of all of the listings for sale in a particular locale (some MLS’s cover just certain cities, whereas others cover an entire geographic region). These listings for sale are added to a database by listing brokers/agents in that locale. Any broker/agent who belongs to an MLS can view these listings as well as other confidential info only available to MLS members.
Practically every MLS also has a public-facing search portal (similar to izabellalipetski.com and other search sites), where buyers can go and search for available properties. MLS’s are said to have the best data because brokers/agents are required to keep their listing info up-to-date there.
Some MLS’s also have what’s called reciprocity, which means if you belong to a neighboring MLS, they will also automatically add you to their MLS. There are some MLS’s in the East Bay California area that has reciprocity, which makes sense when you have clients that are shopping in a wide area and you need to show them properties in multiple locations.
IDX
IDX, which stands for Internet Data Exchange, is the agreement with MLS’s, their member brokers/agents, and occasionally third-party search portals, to share the MLS data directly on broker/agent/third party websites. The way it works is like this: let’s say you’re a real estate broker who belongs to the San Francisco MLS. You can subscribe to the San Francisco MLS IDX feed and receive all of the listings from the San Francisco MLS on your website. In other words, your website ends up being identical (from a listings standpoint) to the website of the San Francisco MLS. What this does is allow you as the broker to have a search portal on your website where buyers can search for properties in your area.
There is a lot of debate as to whether there are any benefits to IDX for brokers/agents. In theory, the thought goes that if you have search capabilities on your site as a broker/agent, that you can drive traffic to your site from consumers, get more leads, keep those leads on your site, etc. The reality is, however, that having listings on your website isn’t a standalone lead-gen strategy. You also need an SEO/PPC/Social Media/Marketing plan to even drive consumers to your site in the first place. This is generally not something that real estate professionals excel at, and it’s one of the reasons that large search portals like Realtor.com exist. Also, most agents don’t have great websites, so the search experience for consumers on their sites is often second-rate.
Summarizing
A good real estate agent in California like Izabella Lipetski keeps herself up-to-date with all changes that are happening within the rules and regulations concerning properties. A good real estate agent in California will be persistent, passionate, and conscious of the dynamics of the important estate and that is exactly what you get when you hire Izabella Lipetski.
What are you looking for? Contact her right away and get a free home evaluation right away!
There are so many other things I will write about. Stay tuned to get more on the real estate market in California.