Searching for Cars Online Sucks. For Homes, It's Better.

We recently had the unfortunate experience of a car accident. Everyone’s fine – 100% – but the car was totaled, and we had to find a replacement.

Naturally, we went online to shop for a car. Coming out of that experience, we have a renewed appreciation for how much simpler and more reliable home searches are online. Let’s compare & contrast.

1) Too Many Sites, Too Much Work

Car shopping online means juggling 12-15 browser tabs. You’ve got portals like Cars.com and Autotrader, corporate sellers like CarMax and Carvana, local dealerships, and niche sites (we were focused on EVs).

In other words, you could be going big, going national, or going hyper-local. You end up saving searches on multiple platforms just to stay updated.

In real estate, there are also tons of websites – Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com, brokerage sites, and agent sites. They vary in quality, freshness and depth of information, but they all pull from the same MLS feed. 

You might find a niche website that's particularly focused on what you're looking for, with MB Confidential being something of a special case for those looking in Manhattan Beach. (Don't strain your arm patting yourself on the back, Dave.) 

2) Listings Are Scattered for Cars, Unified for Homes 

Why so many car sites? Because listings are fragmented.

Some dealers only post on their own sites. Some portals get direct uploads or feeds, others don’t. Miss a site, and you might miss the car you want.

In real estate, nearly every listing is in the MLS feed that's displayed on real estate websites.

There are minor differences – some sites show “coming soon” listings, others don’t – but overall, the inventory is consistent.

All of the big real estate portal type sites want you to believe they're better. But they can't really distinguish themselves by showing more listings than anyone else. We have the same feed at MB Confidential as Zillow.

3) Real Estate Has Rules. Car Sales Don't.

Here’s the big difference: rules. In real estate, if you’re advertising a home, it must go in the MLS. That feed is then available to qualified professionals to display on their websites. It’s a regulated system designed for transparency and fairness.

Car listings? No such rules. Car sellers can post – or not – wherever they want. Even the biggest car sites are missing huge swaths of inventory.

(Disclosure: Dave is a longtime member of the Rules Committee for the local MLS, known as CRMLS, and a member of a state MLS Policy committee of the California Association of Realtors.)

4) One Feed Is Better for Buyers

Here comes the opinion part. 

We're not agitating for change in the car business. Let that be someone else's white whale.

But our car-search experience made it clear: home buyers benefit from a unified, regulated system for display of listings.

You can browse 3, 5, or 15 real estate sites if you want – but you’re not likely to “discover” a hidden listing. That’s a good thing.

Today, there are efforts under way to create “private” sets of home listings off of the MLS.

It's a very hot debate for industry insiders. What we hate about the debate is that home buyers are almost ignored in the discussion.

If we see "private" listings proliferate, we risk turning home shopping into the same fragmented mess as car shopping.

Buyers would need to register on multiple sites just to see all the listings – and might never know the full market history of a home. That’s not better. That’s worse.

Why would you want to go from a situation where everyone with a computer or phone can see all the listings, to one where you have to have some special knowledge, or links, or relationships, to know which homes are available? 

That's not just inconvenient. It means lost opportunities and discrimination. 

Homes are a different kind of asset. The regulation we have now is better – and fairer – for buyers.

Go search for a car online and try to tell us that’s a better system. We’ll wait.