why PropStream Sucks

[Ron Hollingsworth]

I have been playing around with different filters the last few days. I run my search and then for the fun of it, I start checking these properties to see if they are currently listed in MLS. Every time I start checking MLS every home I check is either currently Active, Pending, or sold within the last 6 months. I usually stop around 25-30. I've even selected the filter to remove "on market" properties but I still get Active listings. So far I am not happy with the service.

[Curt Smith]

Hi Ron, and all,   I've  been using propstream for several years.  I've also been using listsource, buying private brokers leads etc.  I've talked to many private data/list brokers.

Its a not talked about secret in the leads market;  dirty data.   If you go to yellowletters.com (picking a letter service at random, not picking on YL);  and buy their list of absentee or vacant you will find lots and lots of those post cards return undeliverable etc.  If you check those lists there will be data points not meeting the criteria of the list.

Why?

Every data source "buys" their data from counties, individual MLSs, other brokers.   IE did yoiu know there are 1100 MLSs across the country.  How many counties?   Each has their own computer systems.

Ron, it may be, you're seeing bad luck that your MLS service has a poor data feed and PS can't fix that. Same with county deed data, so many of my states counties are just poor at making divorce, BK, late on taxes data available.

I've had other services and its my view that PS is the best. I'll agree that users will have bad area due to the county or local MLS issues. In general PS puts alot of effort into only storing clean data. But as said dirty data, stale data, wrong data is an industry wide problem.

Ron, try other services and report back?  We'd like to find better services too even though I'll defend PS per my own looking at other services.

Oh it occurs to me Ron,  you may be (like me) searching for low equity owners to look for subject to deals??   There's a race track in county deeds being filed that will falsely trigger addresses to be low equity but it actually is a recent sale with a NEW mortgage.  The mortgage security deed typically gets filled much faster then the new warrantee deed.  POOF you have a lead with low equity, yeet its just sold or due to stale data its still shown in PS as active.   Look at the mortgage history and y9ou'll see a recent loan transaction and I don't know how to filter those?  PS offers years of owner ship (warrantee deed), but no filter on age of the debt (security deed).    There's no fix for this race track that I know of.  The problem is at the county level AND just how banks/attorneys rush filing the security deed.

Best of luck Ron and all,  curt