While on vacation with my family in Upper Michigan, I began perusing NoMi real estate listings for my own devious purposes. I started my search at Edina Realty, not out of any preference but because a neighbor once showed me their site and I found it easy enough to navigate. Plus the little green houses and red condos kind of remind me of Monopoly game pieces. At their Minneapolis site, there is a tab to click on and view all Minneapolis listings. That link shows you these houses for sale:
Even without clicking on the image to enlarge it, one can see that only homes in downtown and southwest Minneapolis are shown. Okay, well the site does tell us that only 200 of 1,909 listings are shown, and there's a handy sidebar to refine our search. I can understand if they're putting what they see as the 200 most desirable homes or the more profitable listings first. Right or wrong, at least that makes business sense. The sidebar doesn't allow for a more refined geographic search, so we're left to go back to the initial Minneapolis listing page. There they have a sidebar that breaks down search criteria by neighborhood/community. The "Camden/North Minneapolis" tab takes us to...
True to the title of that tab, the map of listings here takes us only to listings in the Camden community. The Harrison, Hawthorne, Jordan, Near North, Sumner-Glenwood, and Willard-Hay neighborhoods are virtually nonexistent. To add insult to injury, a "local restaurants" tab lists a few dining spots in Camden, and then includes Bar La Grassa and Be'Witched Deli - two establishments located outside of NoMi at 800 Washington Ave N.
Is it too much to ask that realty companies like Edina make communities like the Near North group of neighborhoods just as accessible online as other parts of the city are? I'd like to know if this tactic falls under the banner of discriminatory marketing practices. Regardless, I'll be using another company's site to do real estate searches from now on.
I think you may find Remax Results' Minneapolis perspective a bit more inclusive:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.results.net/Search?Q=Minneapolis%2C_MN
Before you smear this fine companies website or name could you please perform your search properly. I looked at your graphic and you never completed the search. You have Minneapolis MN selected and results sorted from HI TO LOW price. I didn't look to see if you had selected "single family home" but please do. If you were to drop your price search to the real world and then sort from low to high I think you'll find that Edina Realty over represents North Minneapolis homes simply because that is what is represented. Do you know why? Because this website pulls results DIRECT FROM THE MLS. So if you want to point fingers about discrimination please do it at the source of the data and please learn to use the website properly. I think you'll find that Edina Realty has the best real estate search website outside of the actual MLS for the Minnesota area. But I guess since you've excluded yourself and can't use it properly anyay you won't miss it.
ReplyDeleteAs snarky as "Just a Realtor" is, he/she is right. Edina did a change to their website a couple of months ago and it's a little trickier to find everything, not just North homes. This might be user error on your part Jeff. Thanks for keep'in on regardless.
ReplyDelete@Ed, that is a more inclusive site, thanks.
ReplyDelete@ JAR and FF, this particular experiment was specifically about what happens BEFORE one refines their search. Granted, I think that many buyers have some idea of which neighborhood they'd like to live in. Even so, the geographic coverage at Edina's site is spotty at best. The southern half of NoMi is one of many areas of Minneapolis that isn't sufficiently represented there. To say, "Well, you can find houses in the area if you're really looking" frankly misses the point of how easy is it for people to find houses here if they aren't specifically looking. Compare that with how easy it is to find listings that way in other parts of the city, and we have ourselves a problem.
Furthermore, I get MLS listings for Hawthorne emailed to me just about every day. When I followed JAR's instructions, I searched for both single-family homes and duplexes in Minneapolis, in the price range of $15,000 and $50,000. From my information I know there are at least six such listings in Hawthorne as of today. Edina's site did show about 20 such listings in 55411, but only one is in Hawthorne. So either they are not entering in every single listing or somebody's base data (theirs or mine) is incorrect.
"So either they are not entering in every single listing or somebody's base data (theirs or mine) is incorrect."
ReplyDeleteOne vote here for "they are not entering every single listing" and it's an OUTRAGE. Is there a way to file some kind of complaint with a civil rights department over this?
Actually, if you zoom in and/or out on the map or if you scroll the map in any direction you should see every active listing in the MLS system. It's actually an excellent system once you get familiar with it.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the reason the NOMI listings are missing is because its called EDINA REALTY and NOT NORTH MINNEAPOLIS REALTY. Get a clue dude.
ReplyDeleteBob, the zooming and scrolling gets me more properties than before, so thanks. However, there is still a disconnect between the MLS notifications I get emailed to me daily from another Realtor and what appears on the Edina site. I'll have to examine the discrepancies more closely to see if it's just a delay where newer listings take a while to appear, or if there are longer-term listings that just don't come up.
ReplyDelete