Fragmented search with Zillow and Trulia

Searching for homes in the Charlottesville (or any area) is easier than ever – and more confusing and fragmented. Even the Wall Street Journal thinks so (albeit that wasn’t the intent of the article). Hopefully consumers don’t get drawn into the false sense of completeness that these sites offer. The local MLS, despite its clunky interface and consumer tools, offers the most comprehensive search available.

The tools Trulia and Zillow provide and the interfaces they offer consumers (and Realtors) should be forcing Realtor.com and local MLS’ to innovate and create better user experiences.I’m curious to learn what Move.com (archived: 2009) is up to.

From yesterday’s WSJ:

For starters, users can enter a city, town or ZIP Code and see a listing of every home for sale, sortable by price, address, number of bedrooms or bathrooms, broker or type of home (single-family or multi-family). They can also narrow the search by establishing parameters for location, size and property type. (bolding mine)

For the 22901 zip code, one of the primary zip codes for Charlottesville:

Trulia – 216
Zillow – 77
CAARMLS – 290
Realtor.com – 290 + 6 multi-family + 2 Farms + 72 land listings

For Crozet (22932), a town just west of Charlottesville:

Trulia – 137
Zillow – 148
CAARMLS – 113
Realtor.com – 113 + 55 land listings

One question – how does Trulia have more listings than the MLS? Is it because they are drawing from more sources? How timely is their data and are there any duplicates?

This is the perfect opportunity to refer to a post I wrote in January – Where do you Search for homes In Charlottesville (hint: it’s more than the MLS).

This post was shamelessly stolen from Jay and localized for the Charlottesville area. (archived: 2010)