Howard County’s Best Home Deals – Part 4
This is a (growing) series of short articles on Howard County Maryland’s real estate market from the buyer’s viewpoint. For other articles see: How to Value A Home (Recognizing Value); Finding Great Deals – Auctions & Foreclosures; Finding Great Deals – FSBO and Short Sales; Finding Great Deals – Realtor® MRIS; and How To Negotiate A Great Deal.
Howard County’s Best Home Deals – Realtor-Owned MRIS
My wife likes to do things the easy way, while I seem drawn to over-complicate things. Take shopping. My wife will go to the location known to have quality products at the best prices, quickly find what she wants, buy it, and head home. Me? I’ll run all over town looking for a “better deal” somewhere, waisting time and gas, and end up never finding a deal that is better than what my wife found in 15 minutes!
Moral: When you’re buying a house – shop like my wife, not like me.
Your best bet for finding the best “deal” on a Howard County home also happens to be the “easy” way – working with a local Realtor® who has access to the the local Realtor® owned Multiple Listing Service (“MLS”).
Realtor® owned MLS services date back to 1907. In a MLS service all area Realtors® “list” their homes for sale into a collective “pool”, sharing information (price, features) with one another and agreeing to split the sales commission when they sell one another’s home listings.
Originally MLS services were in printed form, updated monthly and circulated to different Realtor® offices. In the 1980′s MLS services were computerized and accessed over a private network. In the Maryland/DC/Virginia region about 60 Realtor® MLS services merged in the 1990′s to form the Metropolitan Regional Information Service (“MRIS”), and in 1998 consumer access to the MRIS was granted over the Internet on a limited basis.
According to research by the National Association of Realtors, over 92% of all home sales take place via one more of the nation’s MLS services. And, for buyers looking for a “good deal” on just the “right home”, the local MLS is easily the best place to find it.
Is every home listed with the Realtor® owned MRIS a great deal? Of course not. Of the approximately 2,000 homes listed for sale in Howard County at any given time, plenty of them are overpriced. However, plenty more are listed at very attractive prices. Virtually all Howard County “short sale” homes and/or bank-owned foreclosure homes are listed on the MRIS.
When a bank owns a home and needs to get rid of it quickly, or when any other highly-motivated seller needs to sell, their #1 choice is to list with a Realtor® who has access to the MRIS. The overwhelming majority of “bargain” homes for sale in Howard County can be found on the MRIS.
So, How Do You “Spot” The Good Home Deals?
If the MRIS is a mixture of Howard County home bargains and over-priced homes (and it is), how do you “spot” the bargains? That partly involves “Recognizing Value“, an earlier blog entry, and partly involves “Negotiating The Best Deal”, our next blog entry.
How Can YOU Access The MRIS?
ONLINE (LIMITED) ACCESS. As a consumer, since 2001, you have been able to get partial access to the MLS over the Internet. Not all consumer MLS sites are equal. Sites vary in terms of how much information is offered (e.g. some offer street addresses of homes, some don’t), how current the information is (some are updated instantly, others not for weeks), and whether or not the user is required to “register” in order to perform a search.
For maximum consumer access to Howard County homes online click here.
FULL (REALTOR) ACCESS. To gain full and complete access to the MLS, and to actually tour the inside of properties, you must work with a local Realtor®. State law requires a real estate agent to disclose to you in writing whether or not they will work for you as a “buyer’s agent” (protecting your best interests), or “seller’s agent” (working for the seller’s best interests). Typically the Realtor®’s fees are paid by the seller of the home you purchase, not by you.
As a home buyer you should clarify, upfront, with your agent whether or not they will work as a “buyer’s agent” and whether or not you will be expected to pay the agent’s fee. It would be wise to ask for references, as well as to inquire about the agent’s prior real estate experience.
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