As of this writing, contrary to popular belief, there is no single source of Realtor listings in a Multiple Listing Service (MLS) available to either Real Estate professionals or the public, other than Realtor.com.

  Many websites and virtual Real Estate offices claim to show you “all the MLS listings” but, in fact, they draw from one MLS service, and even then not necessarily all the listings in that service, depending upon how the listing offices have opted to control dissemination of their listing information. Realtor listing Agents must cooperate with other Realtors, but they do not have to allow the use of their listing information on other Agents’ websites.

  Rhode Island has a single statewide MLS service, but that is not the case in Massachusetts .  In the South-East area alone, we deal with four (4) separate MLS services!  Furthermore, none of them are integrated with the others.  Though there is some reciprocity between services, we must still search each database to get a complete picture of all the listings in the area.  You can see all of the active RI listings at riliving.com, a very easy to use and informative website.

  In Massachusetts , the easiest way to get a broad picture of all the residential properties and land listings in the area is to do a simple search on Realtor.com.  The detailed display will give you the MLS number, price, photo, contact information, and mapping (depending on the source MLS service).  You will see two or three duplicate listings with different number and sometimes different photos.  This is, again, because of the overlapping coverage of these various MLS services.  Realtor.com will only display active MLS listings, but this will include properties that have accepted offers but which are still being shown for backup.  If you are working with a Real Estate Agent, they can easily track down additional information for you and schedule appointments for you to see any of these listings.