Today’s Technology

Today’s market dictates the market of tomorrow, and the driving force propelling that truism is technology.

“We have much better tools available to us now, and for the agents who take the time to learn and use them properly, they allow us to work smarter rather than harder,” Giordano said.

New pricing tools are always being introduced on the Web, but are often forgotten just as quickly as they’re discovered. Certain applications that work and work well, however, have lasted. The most popular tool among agents: the MLS.

“I’ve been in real estate for more than 10 years and rely on the MLS because it provides more realistic price using accurate information,” said Morales. “Sometimes I’ll dabble in different tools, but I always come back to the MLS.”

More specifically, the agents are partial to applications that use direct MLS feeds, such as the Florida-specific MLS Advantage and the National Association of Realtors’ Realtor’s Property Resource (RPR), which is available to all members.

“Florida’s Realtor association provides MLS Advantage to all its members, which allows us another perspective for looking at properties,” said Giordano. “It’s become my go-to, and only takes about four minutes to pull up information on my phone.”

Advantage, she went on, imports plenty of property information, like tax data, that can help sell a buyer on a house and convince a seller that a certain price point is more appropriate than what they might have seen online. Giordano, however, says she strives not to overwhelm clients with a bevy of reports.

“I’m a big believer in less is more when it comes to tech. I prefer to keep it simple,” she said. “I don’t use as many tech tools as other agents do.”

Monge, who swears by RPR, said that pricing tools are crucial to her pricing strategy, and she employs them on a daily basis.

“RPR is a must use for agents,” she said. “It allows us to compare the subject property with other properties similar in physical characteristics and square footage.”

RPR also provides users with purchase, demographic and mortgage data, and geographical search parameters can be limited to include results by ZIP code and census tract.

Still, despite the importance Monge now places on techy pricing tools, Miami’s market is unique in that home styles, size and quality can vary so widely in such close proximity that it can sometimes be difficult to find truly comparable homes, which diminishes the usefulness of pricing tools. In these instances, the agent is left to think like an appraiser.