The San Diego Association of Realtors is our local association here in San Diego county. In order to obtain MLS access, one must be a member of the association. The company that “runs” the MLS so to speak is Sandicor.
Now, SDLOOKUP, Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com, and EVERY single website that advertises “MLS” listings gets that information from the MLS that is provided by Sandicor. There is nothing on these sights that cannot be found on Sandicor. However, these other sites provide public access while Sandicor is limited to the members of SDAR.
Now think of Sandicor as the superset and all of these other sites are a subset of the superset. What is essentially different is the presentation of the data.
What are the limitations? Well I guess that is in the eye of the beholder. These sites all get updated from Sandicor daily so there is not much of a timelag. However finding listing history and other comp information from these other sites is not as straightforward as Sandicor. Similarly looking at cancelled and expired listings is not as easy as well.
Sandicor uses a service called Realist to pull up tax roll information. Using the realist tax roll, one can view the recording history for the past 4 recorded loans for a home. So you can use a little common sense to try to figure out what the person has out against the home, but you do not know how much they paid down.
As far as a list of advantages, again it is all in the eye of the beholder. I know many people who are fine with SD Lookup and foreclosure websites and that works fine for them. Many of my own clients use thier own sites and searches and don’t even ask me for MLS information. Some do and some don’t.
