This Post may or may not be relevent for homes outside of the DFW Metroplex as well as the Irving Las Colinas Real Estate Market, however due to the popularity of Zillow and Trulia I doubt it.
Many people including my clients call me up and say that they have seen a home on the Multiple Listing Service or “MLS” for short, and that they want to look at it. After looking up the property for myself, I find out that the property is under contract or even sold…so what gives?
The truth is that if you are not a Realtor who is also a member of MLS, then you do not have the instant streaming access to the data.
You see when I enter a listing or change a price, all agents who have access to the MLS can see that change immediately. All others, such as Homes.com, Realtor.com, or even the actual agents website that says “Search the MLS”, is really not the MLS.
It has the data that is downloaded from the MLS, but since these sites only download certain amounts of information at certain times. It may take a week or so to get all the updates. By that time there are many more changes that are missing from the information.
The best advice I can give you is have your agent set you up as a prospect and enter your criteria that you are looking for. The prospect program will email you the listings as soon as they come out or there is a price change.