Since the introduction of Virtual Office Websites, I have picked up the habit of scheduling listing alerts. My interest is not only in keeping up with listings of comparable homes that would influence my homes’ value, but also to see how data moves to third party listing websites.

Today’s new listing is

755 Via Laguna Vista, San Luis Obispo CA 93405

Copy and paste it into Zillow and Trulia and see what you get. Right now, you will see that the listing is not for sale on Trulia, but they have built a lovely landing page with deep information.

Zillow has the home listed. The price is accurate and all of the listing information is there. However, there are three Zagents representing the property rather than the listing Agent. A Zagent is my name for another agent who advertises on someone else’s listing. Zillow calls it advertising. I am shocked that listing agents and brokers do not pull their listings from Zillow for this practice.

Here are the screen shots that illustrate my findings. You should try the test yourself – especially if you are an MLS, Agent, or Broker.

Trulia has done a nice job of showing information about the neighborhood, they have even used public record data to provide a property description. There is a record of the previous sale and deep information about other comparable sales. That is a lot of data for a listing that does not show for sale yet. Here is a link to the page containing the listing details on Trulia.

Zillow is way out in front of Trulia on the timeliness of posting this listing information. Kodos to them. I often complain about the timeliness of third party websites in updating active listing content. In this case, Zillow is on top of their game – and they have updated the content as quickly as IDX.