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LAST UPDATED: June 27th, 2019

There is more to the real estate industry than just the actual property listings, so many aspects go into the market as a whole. RealtyTrac does their best to cover all of these aspects and publish them for the customers to take advantage of the information. The RealtyTrac team does offer listings for all types of properties; resale, foreclosure, for sale by owner, auction, and bank-owned. These listings make RealtyTrac one of the most highly used resources for buyers and sellers alike. This database of listings covers over 90% of US households and is therefore, a prime place for buyers to find exactly what they are looking for in a new home.  

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The Good

  • System
  • Information
RealtyTrac has created a system that is very organized to help the customer find the listings that are most relevant to their search. All of this is done to make sure the customer has a productive experience that ends in them finding exactly the new house they are looking for. One of the ways that RealtyTrac has streamlined this process is the notation of which type of property the listings contains one the search results page. These notations include:
  • Trustee auction
  • Bank auction
  • Regular sale
  • Bank owned sale
  • Estate auction
  • Foreclosures
This notation provides an easy way for the customers to differentiate between the types of sale so they can get to the types they are really interested in learning more about. Within the basic property listings that are available to any visitor of RealtyTrac, there is also a lot of valuable information that is not always found in their competitors' similar listings. One of these pieces of information is the Home Expenses section. This is a small section where common household services are priced out for the customer. Each listing has a different list depending on what is available but most include:
  • Home security
  • Internet
  • Cable/satellite
  • Phone
  • Home insurance
This is a unique service that RealtyTrac customers can benefit from. It is really helpful for the interested customers to get an idea of what their other expenses will be like living in that home. A lot of those services that are listed are very important to many customers and their lives, so this is a huge help to know if the customer can live in that area. The basic RealtyTrac listings also provide some neighborhood information, like the crime rates. These rates are broken down into total crime index, violent crimes, and property crime. They also show how many registered sex offenders live within a mile of the property the customer is looking at. In addition to these type of risk factors, the listings also include the risk factors for natural disasters or things of that nature like earthquakes or radon exposure. All of this information just helps the customer to understand the area better and make a more informed decision.
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The Bad

  • Full details
There is a lot of great information provided in the RealtyTrac property listings. They do an especially good job of describing the history of the property and giving the customer a complete picture of the market status in the area of the desired property. But a full list of the details about the property is only available to those customers who have an account through RealtyTrac. There is a 7 day free trial for any customer who is interested in trying out the whole spectrum of available features and services. Once the free trial is over, in order to continue using all of the services, the customer is required to make a payment of $49.95 per month. When the customer creates their account for the free trial they are required to enter some personal information, as well as a credit card, this ensures that the customer will be able to continue using the services without interruption after the free trial, (unless the customer cancels that account). Without the account, the customer can see the basic details of each listing. This includes:
  • Price
  • Number of bedrooms and baths
  • Estimated market value
  • Estimated mortgage payments
  • Limited price history
  • Basic property details
  • Estimated home expenses
There are more details the customer can see without an account, but each listing varies with what is available and what can only be seen with an account. Most customers will be able to get a basic idea about a property through the listing without an account, then decide if they want to know more about it or not. If they want to know more, they can create an account for the free trial. After that, the customer can pay for the information on a month to month basis.
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The Bottom Line

The information provided through the property listings of RealtyTrac is very valuable to those customers who are trying to make a very informed decision and do most of their research online before reaching out to an agent. But the one major downside of RealtyTrac is that not all of their property information is available to any customer, as many of their competitors' information is. In order to view the full details, a customer must have an account, which after the free trial is almost $50 per month, a very high price compared to other real estate searching companies. One redeeming quality of the difference in listings is that the customers who do not have an account can see which information is available to them when they have an account, that way they don't make an account and then the information they are looking for isn't even available account members either.
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