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

A spreadsheet on a screen shows homes recently sold.
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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 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 and northeastern Colorado. More specifically, the IRES MLS covers: 

  • 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 some listings in Boulder County, Adams County, Broomfield County and Jefferson County and also extends south via the PPAR MLS that serves Colorado Springs.

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).

To the north of Denver and Denver County this includes real estate in Adams County, Broomfield County and Jefferson County, including 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).

Don’t Trust “Areas Covered” Descriptions on MLS Websites

Some MLS websites will declare the areas they cover. And to some degree, those statements are true. Those MLS sites do include homes for sale in the areas they say they cover. But they do not cover every home for sale in that area! In fact, in our 20+ years of representing buyers in the Denver-Boulder real estate market, we have found that MLS can miss anywhere from 30-70% of the local market.

Why? 

Denver-Boulder MLS Have Limited Coverage!

Where homes are listed is all about where the agents are, not where the homes are.

Because these MLS databases have poorly defined boundaries with respect to the areas they cover, a good real estate agent will probably have to search both systems on a daily basis if you’re going to stay on top of what’s for sale in a particular target area. 

It can get pretty tricky because: 

  • MLS coverage areas overlap each other: Communities in some areas may have 30% of their listings in one MLS system and 70% in another. If you only search one system, you may miss 30% or 70% of the available homes.
  • There are no official boundaries for the MLS coverage areas: Seller’s agents can use any MLS they want when listing a home for sale. But listing a home on an MLS costs money via a membership fee. So most seller’s agents choose the MLS that works best for them in the area where they are most active. The MLS are a patchwork quilt and their coverage really depends on which realtors are using them and where those realtors are working the most actively, not where the home is. 
  • This can be bad for buyers! For example, imagine a real estate agent who works in a Boulder office, who grew up in Arvada and whose wife works in Denver. While this agent will probably focus their marketing for new listings in the Boulder or Boulder County area, he may get calls from old friends in Arvada or his wife’s business associates asking him to list homes in Arvada or Denver. Ideally, he’ll pay the extra bucks to join the MLS system that covers each of these areas, but if he’s broke or cheap he may just enter the listing data on Arvada properties in the system that covers Boulder where he’s already paid his membership fees and hope for the best. If you’re searching for homes in Arvada and use the system covering Denver, you won’t find this property for sale when you look in the Denver MLS.

The National MLS System

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) sponsors this system, which provides national coverage of real estate listings. But it doesn’t cover all homes for sale for many of the same reasons that local MLS are a patchwork quilt: 

  • Its inclusiveness is limited by the fact that some local systems, some listing agents, and some sellers opt not to upload their data to it. 
  • It is also limited by the fact that the reduction of data from a myriad of local systems leads to some errors and to a reduction of the level of detail on each property listed on this system. 

Still, the system is very useful for comparing prices around the country or for getting a preliminary read on property prices in your target area.

How serious is the MLS coverage problem? 

It depends on what you’re using the system for and where you’re looking for real estate. 

If you’re just using the online MLS systems to get a sense of pricing and availability of real estate in various communities, you don’t need to worry much. 

But if you’re using the systems to find your dream home, you may miss that home unless you’re running searches in both systems. And the problem looms large if you’re looking in communities like Superior and Broomfield that are located near the coverage boundaries of two or more systems. While agents who do a lot of listings in Superior or Broomfield are more likely to pay to list their data in both the Boulder and Denver system, you could still be missing 25% or so of the available listings if you don’t duplicate all your searches on 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.