A few years ago, Brian Boero and his wife wanted to buy a vacation home in Italy. After the pandemic, they thought it was the perfect time to treat themselves. Brian runs a real estate consulting firm, so you\u2019d think he\u2019d have an easy time. But once they started looking, the dream turned into a disaster.<\/p>\n
Back in the US, finding homes is simple. You just go to Zillow or Redfin and see what\u2019s available. The sites are updated and reliable. You can book a visit, see all the pictures, and know the place is still for sale. It\u2019s not perfect, but it works.<\/p>\n
But in Italy? Nothing like that exists. Listings were all over the place. Many were outdated or already sold. The same home might be posted by different agents at different prices. Some agents didn\u2019t even list their best homes online. Brian ended up walking around town, checking broker windows, and making calls. It felt like being lost in the dark.<\/p>\n
And here\u2019s the twist. That messy system? It might be where the US is heading.<\/p>\n
Right now, big real estate companies in America are fighting over how listings should be shared. Zillow wants everything public. Other companies, like Compass, are testing ways to keep listings private at first, only showing them on their own websites before sharing them with the rest of the internet. Compass says this gives sellers more control. Zillow says it confuses buyers and makes the market harder to follow.<\/p>\n
If this keeps going, it could break the whole system. You won\u2019t be able to just go to one site and see all the homes. You\u2019ll have to check each company\u2019s site, one by one. That\u2019s exactly what happens in Europe, and it\u2019s a headache.<\/p>\n
In the US, there\u2019s a system called MLS, a network where real estate agents agree to share listings. That info goes to sites like Zillow and Realtor.com. Buyers get a clear picture of what\u2019s for sale. It\u2019s not perfect, but no other country has anything close to it. Europe has tried, but agents there don\u2019t like sharing. They worry someone else might steal their sale.<\/p>\n
This lack of cooperation means buyers in Europe often get incomplete or wrong information. Sites there act more like ads than actual listing platforms. Sometimes a home stays up even after it\u2019s sold, just to pull buyers in and redirect them elsewhere.<\/p>\n
In Portugal, a US agent who moved there says it feels like the Wild West. She misses how, in the US, you can actually see what homes sold for and compare prices. In Europe, that data is hidden or hard to find. You\u2019re often guessing.<\/p>\n
Now, with US companies fighting over who gets to control listings, things are getting shaky. Compass wants to do things its own way. Zillow doesn\u2019t want to play along. They\u2019re even suing each other. This could push other big firms to hide listings too, forcing buyers to chase listings across different websites. Just like you need multiple streaming subscriptions to watch all your favorite shows, you might soon need to visit multiple real estate sites just to see what\u2019s for sale.<\/p>\n
Most people don\u2019t realize how lucky they are in the US. You can sit on your couch, open an app, and see nearly every home on the market. That setup took decades to build. But it\u2019s fragile. There\u2019s no law forcing it to stay this way. It runs on trust and cooperation. And lately, both are in short supply.<\/p>\n
Brian eventually bought a home in Italy. He\u2019s happy with it. But to this day, he has no idea if he got a good deal. The process was so confusing that it made him appreciate the American way of doing things even more.<\/p>\n
His message is simple: don\u2019t take this system for granted. Once it\u2019s gone, getting it back will be really hard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few years ago, Brian Boero and his wife wanted to buy a vacation home in Italy. After the pandemic,\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":294,"featured_media":85447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[217],"class_list":["post-85446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-estate","tag-real-estate"],"reading_time":"4 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/294"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}