Our fabulous home search solution provider, Diverse Solutions, has just upgraded our Phoenix home search system.
The many enhancements include:
- The ability to search for bank owned / foreclosure / REO properties.
- The ability to search for pre-foreclosure / short sale properties.
- The ability to search for homes by school districts.
- The ability to search for homes by days listed on the market.
- The ability to search for properties based on price change percentage over time.
- The ability to add personal notes to homes (requires minimal registration).
- Users are no longer required to have “Cookies” enabled. This alleviates some privacy concerns and is supposed to help those using the Safari browsers have a better search experience.
Additional enhancements have been made to improve the “look and feel” and speed of the system.
For years I never required registration to use the MLS home search functions. Well, technically, it’s an IDX (Internet Data eXchange) search. The difference is tricky, but more importantly from a user’s perspective it doesn’t matter as for all practical purposes you are searching all homes listed in the Phoenix Multiple Listing Service (MLS).
Then a few months ago I experimented with requiring user registration. While there is no question that the number of “leads” produced in this manner increased greatly, the fact is that I don’t follow up / call / email anyone that simply wants to search for homes. (I know for a fact that many real estate agents and brokers are shaking their heads in disbelief right now). The way I figure it, you guys are pretty smart. If you need help, you’ll ask for it. And I’m more than happy to help.
Since I don’t “follow up” there seems little reason to force people to register. So that functionality has been turned off. Now if you want access to some wicked cool things like saved searches, the ability to get automatic updates of new homes, build your own RSS feeds for specific home searches and more, then you will need to supply an email address and password. You still won’t be hassled or get newsletters, refrigerator magnets or any other trinkets real estate agents are prone to distribute. That’s not how we roll. But to access things like auto-updates and saved searches, there has to be a way to identify you from the other several hundred that are using this tool. Email is the way that is done. Trust me, I loathe spam and your email address will never, ever, be sold or compromised.
So if you are looking to search for Phoenix homes, look no further. Head on over to the newly enhanced “Search the Phoenix MLS” page and search to your heart’s content.
Feedback, as always, is appreciated.
I'm Jay Thompson, and I have a little blogging problem... 
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