David Barr's Sarasota and Venice Real Estate Blog

I couldn't update Corbett's track record of his Friday Fox and Friends appearance but here's the gist. He profiled three homes.  When I searched for active listings on Realtor.com based on city, exact price, and bedrooms and baths, two of the three he profiled were not available.  One city, I believe it was Columbia, SC, had "zero" homes for sale matching the Corbett's criteria. This makes 5 out of 6 homes not available for sale that were profiled on Fox and Friends.  Misleading? Fact:  Zillow and Trulia do not have full access to MLS data.   On average they have 78% of the number of listings on Realtor.com.  Even worse, up to 17% of Zillow and Trulia listings are scraped from tax records to boost their listing count, or are old or expired listings they don't take off their site. Study from Inman News: http://www.inman.com/2013/03/06/accuracy-zillow-trulia-listing-data-under-fire-again/#.U2AqIvldWlI Trulia and Zillow will do anything to get vi...

An informative article Florida Realtors economist Brad O'Connor about new housing permits shows what parts of Florida are experiencing a construction boom. The orange shaded areas show Hillsborough County in Tampa, and Orange County in the Orlando, with the state's highest number of building permits. What I found interesting is that Manatee and Sarasota Counties combined had basically the same number of new building permits as Miami-Dade and Broward Counties on the east coast of FL. You can read the entire article here, and use the interactive map:   http://www.floridarealtors.org/ResearchAndStatistics/John-Tuccillo-Market-Report_Summit-Blog.cfm Buying a new home is not something to do on your own without the assistance of an experienced buyer's agent.   Competing new home construction can negatively impact the resale of your 2 or 3 year old property down the road.  Quality of life issues such as traffic congestion can also have a negative influence on the fut...