www.realtor.ca is not the MLS® system!

       

By Angela Boudreau, CAE CRAE Executive Officer, Saint John Real Estate Board You know what's ironic? The incredibly popular real estate website, www.realtor.ca, which is chock-full of REALTOR® listings, isn't actually the means by which REALTORS® search for properties. Not at all. Surprised? The site, which averages 3.5 million unique hits every single month from coast to coast in Canada, solely attracts the public. Day in and day out, thousands upon thousands of clicks and searches are made by home buyers, home sellers, and those who simply enjoy cruising the latest homes for sale. Real estate salespeople who are members of their local real estate board - in Greater Saint John, that's about 230 of them, or over 95 per cent of those licensed in our region - access the services of their Board’s Multiple Listing Service®, also known as MLS®. The MLS® system is wide, deep, and robust. It contains all residential and commercial properties that are actively for sale, or ever have been over the last 20-or so years. In addition to the basic information posted on www.realtor.ca, the MLS® system includes property taxes, sale prices, days on market, specific instructions about showing appointments, and details about heating, land titles, rental equipment, inclusions such as appliances, and dozens more. All of this data is collected by, submitted by, and accessible only to members of the Saint John Real Estate Board. The www.realtor.ca website gets its data from MLS®. Through a legal agreement in place with the Canadian Real Estate Association, a handful of key data fields upload nightly from the MLS® system to www.realtor.ca so the public can have a glance, in an organized and compiled way, at every single listing for sale with the country's more than 100,000 REALTORS®. But most of the true real estate exposure, marketing, and trading occurs as a result of the private MLS® system, where over 230 Greater Saint John REALTORS® share their inventory with fellow REALTORS® and use their professional expertise to endlessly comb through the inventory, analyzing, sorting, and using a variety of system tools to zero in on the properties that meet the needs of each of their buyers. If you choose to sell your home yourself, you probably know it won’t appear on www.realtor.ca, and it certainly won’t be in the MLS® system. But you should also be aware that even if you choose to post your property on a site that promises to get your home "exposed" on www.realtor.ca, it still may not be in the local MLS® system where local REALTORS® can find it and sell it. Only members of the Saint John Real Estate Board can enter listings into MLS®. If you entrust the listing of your house with anyone, make sure they are licensed to trade in real estate in the province of New Brunswick, and find out whether or not your home will be in the Saint John Real Estate Board MLS® system, where over 95 per cent of REALTORS® will find it and market it on your behalf.