What do you think about duplicate listings? Are you allowed to put your listing in more than one category? Say you had 5 acres with a small 400 sf house... would you put that in vacant land, or in residential? Do you want it to get in both categories just in case? Does your MLS allow it? What are the pros and cons? Currently our MLS does allow it, but not many agents actually do it. It becomes a bit tricky if they forget to update both at the same time.
Our admin people say that the duplicate listings can mess up the statistics if agents don't deal with the extra one after the first one closes, or expires. Especially in a small market like ours, those extra listings can skew the statistics and give a false impression. Ideally, the twin listing should be cancelled once the primary one goes into escrow.... but even then it creates a statistic of a listing that was cancelled, when in reality it sold.
All Pro Team - that's really interesting. That must cause a lot of confusion I would think. We can only put 1 listing per category, therefore single family res would only get 1. But if a 4 bedroom house could be separated into 2 "apartments", it could also be listed under Multi Dwelling, as well as well as Single Family.
I have thought about this on many occasions when submitting an MLS listing.....
There are times when there is a grey area as to where our listings belong...especially when it falls between the land only and residential category (is it lot value....or....is it a fixer upper". Our MLS system only allows us to choose between one category only, however, the skilled and educated realtors in the local market, know to search for both when choosing a certain "price" criteria.
Georgina,
I would want to be able to post listing in both categories, but I will have to check our MLS guidelines. Good question!
Carolyn - I agree, the skilled agents will look thoroughly in case there is a treasure hiding in there.
Ernie - If you're able to post in 2 categories, do they charge you a fee? How do they deal with the property once it sells? Do they make you remove one, or show it as cancelled? If those duplicate listings get left behind, they can really mess up the statistics later.
Duplicate listings harm the system IF they are not managed properly.
Normally, the only time a listing can legitimately be listed in several categories is when there is acreage involved.
For example: if a seller has acreage, we can list the property in both Residential and Farm (if Farm use would be allowable). We have both Farm and Vacant Land categories, so if there is a house on the property, it cannot also be listed as Vacant Land.
The other scenario is if the acreage can be divided i.e., house and 3 acres as the main residential and then house and some other division of the acreage that makes sense. All combinations with suitable acreage can be listed at the price relative to that combination.
The bottom line is when the particular property closes, the listing broker can only show Closed on one of the listings. All other combinations whether Farm or Residential must be Withdrawn from the system.
This seems to be fair since our statistics for Residential do not also include Farm listings.
Georgina
Some of our properties that have acreage do not allow "farm" use therefore are only listed as Residential. They just have more land than usual. But some of those properties are suitable for either residential or farm use, thus we may list them both ways, but when that property sells it can only be closed as one or the other, but not both.