Weeding Out the Junk Listings On the MN MLS

Maybe I am skeptic (of you could maybe even call me a cynic), I have learned over the years to take everything that I see on the Minnesota MLS with a cautious optimism.  I am forever surprised at how many times an agent either through incompetency, error, or maybe a little snake oil has incorrect information in the system.  Just like any computer database, it is garbage in and garbage out.  The problem is when my customer and I take time out of our day, drive across town only to see a piece of junk that the agent put on the MLS incorrectly.

I have seen 3 bedroom homes that were really 1 bedrooms when you get out there.  I have seen homes that were listed 1000 square feet larger than they really are.  Agents are notorious for omitting an obvious problem with the house such as the when the previous owner started a remodel by removing all the interior walls, but never finishing it.  Or how about the time that I literally drove to an address and was looking for the house on the MLS picture and I only found a vacant lot where the house used to stand!

So how do you catch these junk listings and mistakes on the MLS in Minnesota so that you don’t waste your time looking at them?  Here are just some thoughts:

  • When you get interested in a property, ask your agent to send you the agent view of the listing.  This gives you a few more bits of information that frankly I think are critical such as time on market, starting sale price.  These 2 items can help you.  If a property has been on the market 360 days and only dropped $5k, there must be an issue.  Also, these agent views will also give you the remarks that are meant for agents.  Often they will contain valuable facts (instead of the sales fluff in the public remarks), such as no basement, remodeled started, code compliance to be completed by buyer, etc.  Many of these facts would make you eliminate that house from your list.
  • If there are pictures of the home on the MN MLS, do your best to look at them with a skeptical eye.  Put your CSI hat on and look for damaged walls, short ceiling heights, small rooms, bad roofs.  If you concentrate of finding the problems, you will get good at noticing imperfections in the pictures that tell you a lot about the home.  I looked at the picture of the 2nd floor of a 1.5 story home in Minneapolis.  I noticed the angle of the camera shot to the angle of the ceiling.  I thought that either the photographer was 6’5″ tall or the ceiling height was less than 6’10″ (which will disqualify that space from being used as a bedroom).  Sure enough, the ceiling height was about 6’9″.
  • Multi-family listings are probably the most error prone MLS listings I have seen.  Most Minnesota Realtors don’t appear to understand how to enter the data correctly for number of units, number of bedrooms, and expenses.  I will often see a duplex listed as 1 unit having 6 bedrooms (they meant to have 2 units with 3 bedrooms each).  Listing agents will often not understand how to put expenses down on the MLS.  They will often include costs that the tenants pay (which as a landlord, I don’t care about in my financial analysis).  When looking at these properties, I recommend that you use your own estimates for an initial review and then follow those up with hard copies of bills and calls the the utility companies to verify costs (do this once you get an accepted offer during your inspection period).

While the Minnesota MLS is absolutely the best tool out there to use to find a home, you need to watch out for the frequent errors and omissions that can frustrate you.

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