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Sometimes an error on the MLS can be a good thing

Sometimes an error on the MLS can be a good thing

Depending on who is looking. A few weeks ago we were looking at homes with buyers that had very specific requirements for their new home. With their criteria, there weren't many available. After seeing all that was there we pulled up some more listings that might work and hit the jackpot.

pic of a house A house was listed for sale on the MLS that matched every single criteria the buyers had - EXCEPT it had 2 bedrooms instead of the minimum of 3 they were looking for. Brian is very familiar with houses and the builder and he knew the model and thought it typically had three bedrooms.

He set up to preview the house and drove to look at it. It had THREE bedrooms. After the buyers saw the house they flipped out. They loved it.

Now, the house had been on the market for quite a long time, over 120 days - long in that price range - and with several price reductions. This house was an amazing deal. Why? Because nobody had found the house! If you are looking for a house with minimum of three bedrooms, you don't typically look at houses with two bedrooms.

Our buyers got a house they love for an amazing price because of a mistake on the MLS entry.

Sometimes an error on the MLS can be a good thing. Good for the buyers. (hmmm, I should write a separate post about the flip side of the coin) Bad for the sellers.

What is concerning is that we are seeing more errors than usual on listing data entered into the MLS system as of late.

Rita

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Posted by Rita Burke ~ Denver Real Estate ~ KennaRealEstate.com on 10/10/2009 01:58 PM

Comments (48)

Errors on Listing Data in the Home Buying Channel

buyers, buying a home, errors on mls

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48 Comments on Sometimes an error on the MLS can be a good thing

OCT

Great news for you...although I'm surprised that nobody bothered to point out the mistake at any point during the 120 days.

I too have had this happen to me... and I love it =)

Wow, that's huge.

On the market for that long and Agent never realized the mistake....well, good for your buyers!

Does your MLS automatically plug in the number of bedrooms from the public records? Either way, the agent obviously did a sloppy job and you got lucky.

Amazing that the owners or their agent didn't pick up on this potentially costly mistake much earlier. Glad your clients were the ones who managed to snag the deal.

No our MLS doesn't plug in the numbers, the agents enter the beds and baths in.

I too was surprised the error was not noticed.

Gee that was amazing luck for the buyer (and not so lucky for the seller)! I've also seen listings entered with the wrong MLS area noted - in looking at the new listings each day you would see the listing and realize its true location by the address - but again, if you are searching for a buyer it sure won't pop up if that MLS area is wrong. And our market (especially in some price ranges) isn't strong enough for a seller to have that kind of major disadvantage & not feel its effect in extra market time...

OCT

Rita, I agree, that a two bedroom house find would be very unusual other than a condo nowadays. Sometimes the wider filter yields what you want in a search...

Yes Rita, good advantage for you and your buyers. Not to good of an example for the listing agent and his representation for the sellers.

That has happened to me before too! I took a listing that had been listed with another company before. I saw that there was an error on previous mls sheet. It never sold with the other company at 6 months. I listed and sold it with the correct info in less than 45 days!

Agents need to know their market and not do such narrow searches for their buyers.

That is awesome! I am glad they found their dream home, and happy that you could make a sale. Yes, sometimes mistakes can be good. The home was apparently just waiting for your buyer! congraatulations!

Those errors happen alot more often than people realize. It just takes a little more time to find them but worth the effort for the payoff!

Wow! That is a lesson to all of us, check your MLS submissions thoroughly for mistakes!

Good luck for your buyers but so sad for the sellers. Their agent probably cost them a lot of money and most certainly a lot of time. Every listing agent should check the MLS themselves after it is in the system.

Thanks for the reminder! Great for your Buyer / Not so Great for the poor Seller... You see it all the time.

Great story. I have seen many errors in our MLS too. Mostly upsets me because it throws off statistics. Our MLS also has several listings that they use for testing. 123 testing street. The MLS seems to think this is ok. Then when I run stats, I have to explain why the highest list property in the community is for 20 million (123 testing streeet), when the highest property is really about 6 million.

Yes; and I am amazed at the spelling (typo?) and grammer errors that slip by!

I recently emailed an agent about her listing being in the wrong area, but I just checked and it is still there in the incorrect area. It has been on the market for 207 days and they are even offering a BTSA. No one can find it! She is a listing agent working out of her market area, but this listing is not near the line of change...careless mistake and the seller is still paying for it.

We find errors quite often. Many of them are careless errors that the listing agents have made, such as misspellings. Unfortunately, when buyers are looking at the customer reports and they see the descriptions that other real estate agents have entered that are poorly written and have many misspellings, it makes them question the industry as a whole. I've taken listings that have expired and after meeting the sellers and touring the home have found that the old MLS listing was incorrect. The sellers never even knew. I provide a copy of the MLS sheet to my sellers so they know exactly how their listing looks to buyers and other agents. Many times when I have been on listing appointments I will show the potential client their old MLS sheet and it will be the first time they have ever seen it. They aren't very happy when they realize people weren't given correct information about their home or were given incomplete information about their home.

Another reason for agents to preview homes as a regular part of their routine. If you preview homes you have the advantage of finding these jewels that other agents will never see.

I've seen this on properties represented by out of area agents more than once. Also, locally, we have a couple of neighborhoods that are on septic systems and there a requirements for extra bedrooms, so many times these will have 2 "legal" bedrooms and one or two more "dens/offices/etc" that I'm sure get used for bedrooms more often than not.

This has happened to us as well on more than one occasion and our Buyer benefited greatly by the mistake. Sometimes this occurs in offices that don't allow agents to input their own listings. There are two of us so we proof each others work and this avoids us making errors like this. And when we are working with a Buyer we broad search and narrow down to get the misloaded properties as well.

I see this a lot especially with the number of garages. Another consideration is a house will often have a den that could be counted as a bedroom in some models or easily converted. So if I have clients needing a 4 bedroom I check the 3 bedroom listings for 3 bedrooms and a den.

To all thanks for your comments. I look at statistics all the time and it's really frustrating to see inconsistencies due to these slips. We also find the errors with homes listed in the wrong area and subdivisions are the worst. It is almost impossible to get good subdivision data because you can enter your own description instead of a drop down menu. Then when I try to look at solds in these subdivisions it takes forever as I have to manually do that. Anyway, back on track... most of our sellers check the mls sheet and we send them links to all other places we post. Ed double check everything. To avoid some other errors with beds and baths we have started to manually imput listings to zillow and trulia.In this instance the seller was a bank. Probably not checking the listing stats.

I see so many lazy agents who hurt themselves and their sellers with their sloppiness... I wrote a blog on that.

Also wanted to mention that since I have started expired campaign I am seeing more errors when I compare the MLS data to the county records. Makes you wonder if this was part of the reason why they expired. e.g. listed as 2 bedroom and county records state 4 beds?

These errors are what separate the good agents from the bad. It also opens doors for good agents clients.

When I search I include a wider area so I can catch these mistakes and even leave out the city name if I have an area because agents do not take the time to proof their work.

After we load a listing we send the Full Print/Agents Copy to the client (Banks too), to proof the data. Occassionally they find one or two errors and I am grateful or it is a clarification to something I misunderstood.

Human to Error - Divine to Correct! Joy

I once helped a buyer get a fantastic deal because I noticed a street listed in one County that I was pretty certain didn't actually exist, but did in the more expensive area where I work. Upon checking I found out I was correct. Of course there were no showings, especially with 12 bedrooms and 12 baths in the lower level and none upstairs, no connection to a legitimate tax record and more.

The agent had no idea what she was doing and probably cost her clients $25k. After settlement (which she could not find, and never showed up) I called her broker and gave him the details. He was speechless!

George - well that's a crazy story! Wow.

Joy and Jeff - Love it! Human to Error - Divine to Correct!

Rita,

And sometimes bad for the agent! I sell condos that are very often furnished. If it's checked that the washer/dryer convey, and they don't, many agents have ended up BUYING a washer/dryer to keep the deal alive!

Check your listings CAREFULLY!

Kathy Opatka

This is very similar to one posting an item on EBay with a spelling error. Many times an item will sell for less than what it normally would because the item can only be found by one savvy enough to look for commonspelling errors. If it's not listed corrected there will be less bidders to compete against.

Personally -- real estate related - -a client of mine was able to purchase a condo villa with an attached garage at a price of one without a garage. A tremendous saving to my buyer as what normally would be a property shown often was not being shown at all. Obviously the listing agent did not input that field correctly and thus it would not turn up in an search.

Like others above, I always like to have my sellers review for errors the MLS data I've submitted. And, even though it will take more time for me to go through that many more listings for my buyers, I make my searches more broad based than other agents might.

I have friends who had their place listed with an agent who refused to correct the errors in MLS.

For instance, alongside the description of their kitchen - which has all the bells and whistles anyone could want - the agent had placed a photo of the bar sink in their sun room, with a mini-refrigerator alongside.

They also have a large building that was once commercial - and the agent listed it as a barn. He also said they had a pasture. When a customer (the seller's sister) called looking for horse property and asked about the barn, the agent said it was carpeted. That was right before he told her that he had other properties she'd probably like better.

My friend said that if she had known she had a barn and a pasture she'd have bought a horse a long time ago!

That all wouldn't have been so bad if the agent hadn't gotten angry with them for asking to have these and a few other errors corrected.

Yes - there are some out there who give the industry a very bad name.

Here in San Francisco there are often 'In-Law units' or 'unwarranted' rooms down. Every time I search for a 3-bedroom I always include 2-BR in the search to see if these other rooms have been built. Tax records only show what has been done with permit. Reality is often a different story!

OCT

I had a similar experience in finding a diamond in the rough. It's great. Thanks for sharing.

That poor seller... wonder how much sooner it would have sold, and at how much higher a price, if they had only known. Sounds like potential for a lawsuit if they find out what happened!

I've noticed it a lot too. Especially for out of area agents listing REO's. They often have someone helping and may never have been in the property to know for certain what it should be. And, we all can make an entry error now and again, especially if your MLS doesn't have the potential to populate from tax records (but these can be wrong too!).

Just as a safety step, I always send a copy of the MLS details to the homeowner. It helps them to see how the home is being presented to other agents, and they'd be sure to notice that type of mistake!

Rita, Nice post. Read all of comments. Have you ever wondered if some of these incorrect MLS entries were done on purpose?

unfortunately, we are seeing more and more appraisers who don't have the same information that you do, so when they do their comps, they will pick this home up as a two bedroom residence and this can affect the quality and pricing in the appraisal. My suggestion is to get the deal under agreement and then ask the listing broker to update the MLS so that this information matches the public record and will avoid the problem mentioned above.

The next agent that sells a 3 bedroom home in the community will thank you!

Weichart - good point!

I can understand how an agent can make a mistake on a listing, but to not have it fixed within a week at most is criminal.

It always pay to think outside the box. I too have found listings with wrong information. Sometimes an agent forgets that it what the rooms qualify as, not what the owner is using it for.

OCT

Wow Rita. I ran into something similar, however, the other buyer before us beat us to it. I guess that it happens more than we think.

What I find hard to understand here is why the sellers didn't pick up on it....here the sellers seem to look at their listing on line and on the MLS more often than Realtors do....Lazy Real Estate person or one not too concerned about details...wonder how much is missed when reviewing a contract to purchase?

Dear Ms. Rita, that is a crime done to the seller. No one obviously proof reads anything at the listing office! Great blunder in which you benefited. I know that I wouldn't have shown it because some people actually do take the wall down between the small 2nd and 3rd BR's and actually wreck the house & floorplan.

you must write the flip side or use it as an example to the builder of why they should use you the next time.

OCT

I too have had this experience and love it for the same reason. Guess the agent is not paying much attention to the sellers needs when they let these errors occur.

NOV

I've made a couple of posts on my different blogs about these MLS mistakes, although the two I found were both foreclosures. These were both condominium listings and one did not list there was an in-unit laundry and the other one did not list the garage! Because I knew that the 2nd place had garages (it was an older and larger complex, the first one was a single condo building) we went looking since they're on the lower level.

An agent that was not familiar with the complex wouldn't know to do that and might have missed such an important thing. So my buyers got a great deal because of this misinformation.

I also send my sellers the MLS print-out as soon as I list it and ask them to read through it and get back to me with any needed changes or corrections. I, too, am surprised at sellers that listed with other agents that never even saw their print-out.

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