MLS vs Portals.
Do You Know the Difference?

When a home search becomes serious, one of the first things a Buyer does is sign up for saved search alerts on the most popular listing sites or ‘portals’ such as Realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia, Yahoo or Redfin. Unfortunately, these aren’t always the best websites for the most up-to-date and accurate information.

Denver’s Metrolist (or MLS) is the central database of home listings entered directly by real estate professionals when a home is listed for sale. It’s a real-time database that shows precisely when a property is available for sale at any given moment, precisely when a property sells and for what price.

Portals are third party websites that aggregate content from various sources. They rely on advertising and selling leads to agents and as a result, aren’t always current. How many times have you looked on Zillow, Trulia or Redfin only to find out that home sold weeks ago but still shows it’s available for sale?!

We tested five major neighborhood markets and in every case, Denver’s MLS (REColorado.com) beats them all. The alerts are faster and more reliable than those of Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, Homes.com, Redfin, Estately and local brokerage sites.