I thought this would be a good time to address this issue after having several questions about it. At my Huntsville Alabama Real Estate Search Website, I provide a list of every home listed in our North Alabama MLS System.

The listing information pages give a lot of good information, but unfortunately, it doesn’t give some major information that I think would be quite beneficial, such as square feet and street addresses. The reason for this follows below:

When a Realtor in our area gets a listing, one of the first things they do is put it in the MLS. That night (around 2am) our MLS puts out a database with all of the homes, information, pictures, etc. Once this is done, all agent sites (that pull from here), national sites (realtor.com, remax.com, etc.), and my site pull this database and inserts the information into our own database.

Unfortunately for you and me, the MLS gets to decide what information passes to these websites. They can pick and choose what is available to be posted on other sites. So, the two pieces of information that they will not distribute are square feet and street address. I absolutely disagree with this. It limits how productive our websites can be in providing you information.

For instance, if we were allowed to post street addresses, you could easily click a link on the page and see a google map of that home. If we were able to post square feet, you would be able to narrow your search better without having to place a call to me or some other agent. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the call one bit, but it would save you time and hassle, and that’s the negative.

Here’s the kicker: It wasn’t always like this. As recent as eight months ago, we were able to post this information. “What happened?” you may ask. There’s a long and a short answer to that, so I’ll sum it up: A couple of the “more powerful” agents (who will remain nameless) decided that having that information given to the general public was hurting their call and sales volume (ludicrous), and they pushed VERY hard to get the MLS to have a vote to remove that information. As you can see, it worked. Dad gum Realtors!

I wish it were different, but I strive to provide as much on my site as possible. I also try and provide features that you may not be able to find elsewhere, such as:
1. List of all cities in North Alabama that you may click and see all of the homes in that city.
2. List of all subdivisions in North Alabama that you may click and see all of the homes in that subdivision.
3. This Blog - which I hope provides some information to you guys!
4. More Coming! If you have any thoughts or ideas on how I could make the my real estate website better, I would love to hear from you. Email seth@sethparker.net! If it’s possible, I’ll do it!