The internet has changed everything about how buyers find houses. The old MLS guild mentality* still exists in some places, but northern California is online in a big way. Most Sonoma County listings are on realtor.com, zillow.com, trulia.com, and a host of other syndicating sites. Craigslist is a dominating force all over the country, but particularly strong in the Bay Area where Craig started his service (and proceeded to upend the newpaper business).
Most real estate professionals have their own web sites (like this Sonoma County Real Estate site you are reading) and every national real estate brokerage has listings available. The mother lode of all these listings is in the MLS systems where each property for sale is carefully listed by the agent who obtained the listing from the seller. In the North Bay, our MLS system is called BAREIS (Bay Area Real Estate Information Service). That’s the organization that feeds the greathomes web site with public access to most of the listings. Notice the highlighting of the word “most”. Even the MLS doesn’t allow public access to every listing since agents can choose whether to share the listing online or not. Many choose not to.
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