If you google for information about a specific Outer Banks house, it’s highly likely that either the zillow web site or the national Realtor web site will pop up in the first results. These national web sites have the resources and the know how to get their web site to the top of the first page.
First, Not Best
Just because they are good at being first does not mean they are best for your Outer Banks home search. Granted they have some interesting tools that may or may not have some use like their value algorithm. Unfortunately, their information is too generic for this marketplace. These national real estate sites don’t have many important fields Outer Banks home buyers want to know about. For example, they don’t have a field for flood zone or vacation rental income. The closer you get to purchasing, the more you’ll want Outer Banks specific information that is not available on these national web sites. Flood zones, insurance info and cost of furnishings are just a few examples.
Accuracy Saves Time
The information on some of these national web sites is also not as accurate as it should be. To be 100% accurate the information must be updated the moment it is updated in the Multiple Listing Service. It takes some of these national sites up to 24 hours to update the information. Furthermore, they sometimes continue to have out dated listing information on their sites. Many Outer Banks home buyers have called their agent looking for information they saw on zillow only to find out it sold a month ago.
At Scott Team Realty we’ve added just about all of these area specific fields to the property search section of our web site. This requires regular updates because more information is available on a regular basis. Annual rental income is one of these fields. Use Scott Team Realty’s web site for your Outer Banks home searches, in the long run you’ll save a ton of time and effort.
Leave a Reply