We’re taking a little detour from the Buying your Lake Wallenpaupack real estate series this week to focus on one of the most amazing tools every created…the publicly searchable Pike and Wayne County PA MLS (short for Multiple Listing Service) with Portal. I won’t go into all the gory details of what the MLS is, means, or how it began, as I’d prefer that you remain awake and reading…but know at one time, before the advent of the glorious internet, only real estate agents had access to this data and it was in a printed format. Yikes!
What the Pike and Wayne County PA MLS allows YOU do to is search for available properties using the criteria YOU chose…so you can find exactly what you’re looking for, or darn close to it…and you can create a Portal to save your searches, likes, dislikes and MORE! I provide FREE Pike and Wayne County/Lake Wallenpaupack MLS access here in my blog and on my website, which not all agents do. Me, I think the best way to find clients is to be honest, available and informative. So, it’s free here now and always will be. Do I hope you call ME when you want to go look at a home? YOU BETCHA!
If you look up above this post, you’ll see a tab that says “Search the MLS”. Right click on it and open it in a new tab or window so you can go back and forth during the tutorial if you wish, or you can just print this page for use in the real world. Ready? Here we go!
Scroll down on the Search the MLS page and click on the ‘Click here to search’ link. You’ll see a page that takes a little bit to load with ‘Property Search’ in the upper left corner. Now, you can skip this next step and just search the MLS but I think you’d be missing out on LOTS of features…so click on the Log In link over on the right side. A little box will pop up and you can fill in the info there and sign up…this information is ONLY VIEWABLE TO ME, AND NO ONE ELSE, EVER! All you need to fill out is your name and email address…and while I’d love it if you used your real name you can put a fake one in there, but be sure to use a real email address so you can get your password. You’ll get an email soon after with the subject ‘Portal Logon Information’ and it will contain your username and password and the login link. Click it to login, and enter your info. You’ll see the MLS search again, but with a message: Welcome, *your name here*! You have successfully logged into the portal of Sandra Durlee Lauer. You may now save searches using “Save” and rank your listings using the icons next to each listing. Also, you may go to your dashboard by clicking “Home”.
Click on the Home link on the right hand side. You’ll see a page with four sections: Searches and Reports, Carts, Messages and Profile. You may want to go to your Profile first to change your password to something you will actually remember. Now, let’s do our first search!
Click on New Search. Over on the left, choose your criteria. You can use as few or as many as you would like. Let’s say you’re looking for a home under 100K in the Wallenpaupack School District. Click the List Price box, and enter 0 and 99,999 in the boxes. Now, a little further down, check the School District box. Then pick Wallenpaupack. Then, click on View Results. TADA! All the houses on the Pike and Wayne County MLS that are less than 100K and in the Wallenpaupack Area School District are displayed for you.
Now, when you are viewing all these, you can click on the smiley face, the median face or the sad face to indicate whether or not you like, are indifferent to or don’t like any particular listing and it will SAVE this info to your portal so I can get a better idea of what suits your needs, and you can keep track too! Happy face is a Favorite, median face is a Possibility and a sad face is a Reject. The emoticons will turn from black and white to full color when you chose one. You can even share your listings on Facebook, Twitter, My Space or via email.
Click on any individual listing to view all the details…and if you want to send me a note about it, click on the Messages tab, then click “Write a message to Sandra about the highlighted listing’. Ask me questions, request a showing…whatever you need!
If you want to save your search so you can see it again, just click the SAVE link on the right hand side, then enter a name and a description.
Now, click on the Home link. You’ll see all the things you marked over in your Cart, just click to see them again. Messages you sent are down in the lower left, and keep an eye out in the cart for recommended to show up…those are ones I think you may like! Your saved searches will appear in the Searches and Reports section, ready and waiting for you when you feel like looking.
If you decide not to use the Portal feature that is perfectly fine…you can use my MLS search however you like, and once you start using it you may find it hard to stop! Real estate here in the Lake Wallenpaupack area is so interesting, and many folks find looking at homes for sale online to be a relaxing, fun hobby. No, I’m not kidding…I really know people who say that!
Happy searching, and if you have any questions, let me know.
NOTE: This tutorial was handwritten and custom made by ME, so please don’t reuse it and pass it off as your own without permisson. Email me and ask first…if I happen to see it somewhere, I will be in touch regarding copyrights. Thanks!