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...

Follow up to my blog post and Tweets about Corbett highlighting homes not for sale on Fox and Friends: I got a call from a Trulia representative around 7am PST.  I guess I hit a nerve. I stand by my assertions. The three homes he highlighted are not for sale on Realtor.com  He provides no MLS numbers and he provides no listing Realtor information. Trulia offered to send me and email with the MLS numbers.  I challenged them to rebut me on Twitter. Crickets.  I'm sure Trulia is now in the process of restricting my access to their website as Zillow has.  The Ministry of Real Estate Propaganda marches on. Stay tuned.  I'm sure Fox News doesn't want real estate misinformation on their air.

I've been writing for a while now about the true mission of Zillow and Trulia:  increase visitors to their websites by using unreliable real estate data.  And every time I see Michael Corbett for Trulia on TV, especially on Fox and Friends on Fox News, the misinformation really gets my blood boiling. Today Corbett, grinning former soap opera actor, featured 3 homes from Trulia: 1) Nashville, TN  3 br, 2.5 bath for $239,900.  The featured home is not available on Realtor.com using that exact search criteria. 2) Raleigh, NC  3 br, 2.5 bath for $285,000.  This featured home is not available on Realtor.com using that exact search criteria. 3) Plano, TX  4 br, 3.5 bath for $275,000.  Realtor.com indicates ZERO homes for sale using that criteria. He then goes on to cite the "Trulia Price Trend" reports.  Unfortunately for Corbett, according to a study, Zillow and Trulia have 78% of the total listings for sale as Realtor.com, the only rea...