Which home search site is your favorite?

Question

Ideally everyone would have personal access to the MLS, but considering a lot of us don't, which home search does everyone like the best? I'm sure this has already been talked about plenty but heres my input. I like zillow for the market trends and "zestimates" for whatever they're worth(I know to take them with a grain of salt), like trulia because they have crime maps, easily saved searches, and realtor for the nearby school ratings. I know you can essentially find most of the information on each site, but feel like each one lacks enough customizable features.

For example, in researching nearby markets, it would be nice to do a search for example, multi-family properties, in this price range, X mile radius from a zip code, relatively safe neighborhood, with a school rating of 6/10 or above with a "market temp" of medium-hot. I'm just using that as an example, but it seems that a lot of the home search sites lack those features that could be helpful for a newbie. What do you think?

Paul Hitchings · Answer

Realtor.com has the most accurate MLS feed. Other sites are typically less accurate.

My advice is use whatever site you like the best, but confirm by looking the listing on Realtor.com and then by calling the agent.

No reason, imho, to avoid a website like Zillow or Trulia just because they don't have the most up to date listings, just keep that in mind in your search. As a matter of fact, Zillow was showing a property sold recently and that was more accurate than Realtor.com, which just said "off market", so I'm sure in some cases Trulia or Zillow might win.

I'm curious to hear what others have to say.