Now that the barn door has been left open for several years, our local MLS provider, Sandicor, has finally developed a website that will allow the consumer to access the MLS directly:
They don’t ask us for ideas about what it wanted and needed, they just roll this out and hope it works. They say they’d like feedback, but they probably think that people will be gushing with praise.
Here is their introductory pitch below:
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San Diego’s four Association of REALTORS® and Sandicor are excited to announce the release of a new consumer website! This website is designed to turn the consumer’s focus back to Brokers and Agents and away from third party sites such as Zillow and Trulia that rank among the top 20 websites in the category of San Diego real estate. In addition to the Sandicor MLS site, there will be four additional websites branded to each of the four Shareholder REALTOR® Associations that own Sandicor. The goal is simply to reverse the trend of consumers going out to and staying on third party sites and to drive consumer traffic back to our member’s websites.
Developed around a powerful and flexible search engine, the websites provide the following benefits for brokers and agents:
–Deliver leads to brokers and agents
–Drive traffic back to brokers and agents and away from third party sites like Trulia and Zillow
–Facilitate a consumer’s search for San Diego County real estate information and properties.
–Provide consumers with unbiased, timely (updated every 10 minutes) and comprehensive data – all of which are valued and preferred by the consumer
–Allow the consumer to find an agent using a name, affiliated office or location
–Permit county-wide Open House searches
–Provide valuable Community Data
–Provide links to helpful information such as Population Statistics, School Systems, and Government Resources
–Offers a variety of reports for both Brokers and Agents on their listings such as the number of views of their listings in a search, the number of times the listing was displayed and emailed and more.
–Lead to a reduction in the fees paid by Brokers for participation in national third party sites.
There is no additional fee to provide this tremendous benefit. Sandicor can leverage the consumer view that the MLS is the trusted source for real estate information provided by and for the real estate professionals in San Diego County. The consumer knows MLS data is unbiased, timely and comprehensive.
Please watch for future emails informing you of what reports will be available to you and how to update your contact information. We look forward to making the sites a success and to help bring the business back to you! Go ahead, click on the link and take a test drive now!
I wonder how newspapers like the UT compare?
Realestate section
Total Crap.
This looks like they hired some high school students to design the website. I typed in the zip code on the home page and after I hit enter, it reset all of my previous search criteria and started me at the beginning. Therefore, I had to re-enter my search criteria again.
Amateurs. One word to the those responsible for Sandicor’s consumer website……..Redfin.
I am playing around with it. I won’t knock anyone/entity for trying something new.
As long as there is a team that handles feedback and they work on kinks and improvements anything is possible.
I recall when redfin first started there were a couple kinks that I emaile them about…I got responses and literally in a couple months they fixed the kinks and addd my sugestions (I am sure others had my same suggestions) But tehy actually responded to me directly.
Sandicor will need to have a team in place however.
The way things are going with Redfin I think they could someday simply be a competing service to MLS….”This property Exclusivly Listed by Redfin” type of jingle.
I don’t think it’s that bad. Not as smooth as redfin or ziprealty but gets the message across. Welcome to the 21st century Sandicor you can stop using the MLS books now.
I liked the press release in that there was no mention whatsoever of redfin, just zillow and trulia.
As a consumer, I only use RedFin, unless I’m looking at markets not covered by RedFin. Why in the world would I use zillow or trulia???
I use realtor.com for flyover country, and boy is that painful.
I’m anti-Sandicor after they cut off public access during the period where I was looking to purchase. It seems they have a habit of making terrible decisions.
Personally I like sdlookup. Very user friendly.
So now they’re competing with their own members, like Redfin and others that created a listing viewer? And showing the exact same data, as Kris Berg just pointed out on her blog. Where’s the added value?
They need to do something big, not give us just another listing site, if they want to really improve things.
I’d start by fixing the production data, then displaying that. Then add comments with responses from verified buyers and sellers.
Boom, now there’s a reason for people to come to Sandicor to look at homes.
I could go on… How about increasing the tiny 640×480 size limit on photos, what about allowing a youtube link of a walkthrough. Added value will come from real improvements, not just another IDX site.
It’s clunky. Speed is ok, not great, and they appear to have sacrificed speed for zoomability. Something Redfin now has both of in spades. Besides, the recent sales info in Redfin trounces this.
The WORST feature is the inability to see the listing drill-through in a separate tab; requiring the user to re-drill to the detail after looking at a listing. Colossal ui faux pas. What were they thinking?
I’d give it a 3 out of 10.
chuck
You still have to go to other websites to see critical information, such as listing price history and previous sales. Does Sandicor think that by sticking their head in the sand, the elephant in the room disappears? This is relevant information, no matter how much the listing agents don’t like it, so you might as well embrace it. Otherwise, it just looks bad.