The Denver-Boulder Real Estate Market Has Two Multiple Listings Services (MLS) Showing Homes for Sale

By Claudia Lewis, Agents for Home Buyers

The Multiple Listings Service (MLS) is a crucial, online database tool that helps real estate agents bring home buyers and sellers together. Using the MLS database, a real estate seller’s agent lists their clients’ home for sale. Buyer’s agents use the MLS to find homes that meet the criteria their clients care most about. This database tool is what powers all online real estate lookup services. Without the MLS systems, agents and their buyer clients would be reduced to driving around looking for yard signs! And the Denver-Boulder Metro real estate market has two of them.

There Are Two Multiple Listings Service (MLS) Systems Here

There are two services that make up the Denver-Boulder Multiple Listings Service:

• Information and Real Estate Services (IRES)
• REcolorado

Real estate agents and related service providers access them online for a monthly fee. Many real estate agents and brokerages only subscribe to one of the Denver-Boulder Multiple Listings Service systems as a cost-saving measure. Unfortunately for their clients, using just one of the two MLS means that buyers may not get an accurate and comprehensive picture of the our fast-moving market. They might miss homes that meet their criteria.

If your broker can’t pull up listings from both of these systems, nothing else matters. Neither experience, company size or reputation, nor attitude and good intentions will overcome the disadvantages of belonging to only one MLS database. Without subscribing to both of our local MLS services, real estate agents are trying to do business with one hand tied behind their back.

What areas does Information and Real Estate Services, LLC (IRES) Cover?

In general, the IRES MLS covers:

• Boulder County and northeastern Colorado. This area encompasses Boulder, Louisville, Superior, Lafayette, Erie, Longmont, Lyons, and Nederland.
• IRES also covers all of the communities in Larimer County to the north, including Fort Collins, Loveland, and Estes Park.
• IRES includes areas outside of Boulder County, including Broomfield County and Weld County (e.g., Broomfield, Brighton, Firestone, Dacono, Frederick, and Greeley).
• If you are looking for property in the mountains or plains areas outside these towns, IRES covers those too, from the continental divide to the Wyoming border.

About REcolorado MLS

REcolorado covers the Denver Metro Area but includes listings in Boulder County, Adams County, Broomfield County and Jefferson County.

Generally, REcolorado encompasses communities such as Golden, Arvada, Westminster, Broomfield, Northglenn and Thornton.

In the east and south, this includes real estate in Denver County, Arapahoe County, Douglas County, and Elbert County (e.g., Lakewood, Highlands Ranch, and Aurora).

It’s Not About Where the Homes Are, It’s About Where the Agents Are

In reality, the actual boundaries of the two MLS systems are dictated more by agents and their coverage areas than by geographical area.

An agent working in an area where IRES has deep coverage, like Longmont for example, might subscribe only to IRES as a cost-saving strategy.

But what happens if that agent takes a client in Arvada? If that client is a buyer, they will miss a significant portion of the homes for sale in Arvada because IRES may not have deep coverage in Jefferson County. If the client is a seller, listing the property in IRES will make it invisible to many Arvada buyers. By only using one of our area’s two MLS services, this agent is not representing his or her client to the fullest. Ideally, the agent in this scenario will pay the extra money to join the other MLS system. This is not how it usually plays out; many agents just hope for the best.

Does Working with One MLS Really Matter?

That depends. If you’re just trying to get a general sense of pricing and availability, one of the Denver-Boulder Multiple Listing Services may be enough.

But if you are trying to find your dream home, you may miss it unless you’re searching in both systems.

Statistically, Agents for Home Buyers has found that you will miss about 25% of the available listings if you don’t look in both systems.

Using both MLS systems is critical for gathering the comparable homes sales history your agent will use to determine a fair market price. Recent comparable sales indicate whether a listing price is fair when it comes time to make an offer.

We Subscribe to Both MLS Systems

At Agents for Home Buyers, we believe it’s our duty to give you the most comprehensive picture of the real estate market. For that reason, and because our market has two MLS systems, we subscribe to both. That way, we can keep our finger on the pulse of the local market, in its entirety, each day as it evolves.

Want to learn more? Contact Agents for Home Buyers and we can help you start your home search.