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What price did that listing end up selling for? Now you can find out on IntownElite.com

Ever wonder what that house down the street sold for? You know what the list (asking) price was when it went under contract, but what was the final sale number? Previously, our local MLSs, who provide the listings on our site, wouldn't allow agents or brokers to display sold listings or their prices. There were some national portal sites which would show sold prices, but they got their data from public records, which were several months behind, and had some issues with accuracy.

That all changed with a recent decision by the National Association of REALTORs®. NAR changed their IDX policy to recommend that MLS's make sold listings and their prices available for agents and brokers to display on their websites. (IDX, or Internet Data eXchange, is the system by which agents and brokers share their listings on each others websites.) Although neither of our local MLSs are governed by the NAR, they both have decided to allow sold listings to be displayed on our websites for properties that have sold within the last 3 years. GAMLS was the first to go forward with this, and their sold listings can already be seen on our site. FMLS followed along later, and those sold listings should be available shortly.

Since our data comes directly from the MLS you can be assured that it will be both timely and accurate. MLS rules require agents update the system within 3 days of closing, so the sale price will be available on our site quickly, sometimes even the day of closing. Also, all of the listing photos remain available, so you can get an idea of the condition of the property. This is yet another reason why our site is superiorto the national portals, which typically...

You probably know that an MLS (Multiple Listing Service) is a system that agents use to market their listings to other agents. Through something called IDX (Internet Data eXchange), agents can display all of the homes listed in the MLS on our websites, so you as a homebuyer can participate in your own home search. You may or may not be aware, but we have two MLS's in the metro Atlanta area, First Multiple Listing Service (FMLS) and Georgia Multiple Listing Service (GAMLS). Most Intown Atlanta agents use FMLS as our primary MLS. Everything in our geographical market niche is in the FMLS "mandatory" area, meaning agents who list properties in Intown Atlanta are supposed to enter their listings into FMLS. So, our website has always pulled listings from FMLS, since that should capture all of the homes and condos listed for sale in Intown Atlanta. But sometimes I see Intown Atlanta homes listed in GAMLS and not FMLS. In theory, that shouldn't happen, but in reality, sometimes it does. Often it's when agent from the south suburbs (where GAMLS is more prominent) comes into Atlanta and lists a property. It's also common with REO (bank-owned foreclosures), and either their agents don't know this is an FMLS mandatory area, or they're actually not members of FMLS.

Either way, we want IntownElite.com to be your go-to site for Intown Atlanta real estate, so we need to make sure our site has all of the listings. So, we added GAMLS to our IDX feed, meaning we have all listings from both local MLS systems, so you don't miss any listings. It's one of the things that makes IntownElite.com better than the big national...

We keep adding new and improved home search features here on IntownElite.com, and the latest additions are pretty slick! You may have noticed these already, but I hadn't blogged about them yet. One is the "autocomplete" location search box. This box can accept almost any type of location information, such as Cities, Zip Codes, Neighborhoods, Condo names, etc.  But now it can also accept addresses, MLS numbers and Schools. It works somewhat like Google's Instant Search,  just start typing and it starts figuring out what you're looking for. You'll see that autocomplete search box on our home page, in the right sidebar of pages that have one, and in the left sidebar of our home search.  

Below that search box is where you set your search preferences. The neat improvement here, is that as soon as you start entering in your criteria, the results to the right immediately starts displaying the listings that match those specifications. You can select price, bedrooms, baths, etc., and instantly the listings displayed on the right will automagically refine to display only those listings, and the green "Properties Found" keeps a running count of how many listings that meet those preferences.  Once you've set your preferences, you can mouse over property icons on the map, or see the listings displayed in a list or gallery format. Well, we think it's pretty cool, and we hope you will too. Bottom line, it empowers you to help you find a home that's perfect for you. Click here to try it out! Now, if you prefer not to do all the hunting yourself, we're here to help. Feel free to contact us and we can set up a custom search just for you.