Real Estate 101: Why the MLS Is Outdated in 2025
A real estate expert breaks down why the MLS system is failing investors and buyers in 2025, and shows Deal Sauce as a faster alternative for finding deals. The video covers how listing and buyer's agents work, and what strategies actually move the market now.
A listing agent is the person who sells a family's home. A buyer's agent is somebody who helps a family find a house to buy.
Make sense?
How do these agents find each other to strike a deal? A couple years ago, I had my first camera guy ask me, will you teach me how to do a deal? And I said, no, of course, man. If you're on the other side of the camera, you should probably learn how to do a deal. You're capturing all this amazing content. So, for example, Trevon, camera guy, right behind the camera that's holding it right now, we are driving to Tucson together to go film at 160 unit multifamily deal that I bought on seller finance. It's a $20 million deal. It makes $53,000 a month in our pocket. Every month, it generates $160,000 in revenue. But after all of our expenses, payroll payments to the seller, every last dime of expenses, we net $53,000 a month. You probably want to learn, but when you're just starting out, jumping into a $20 million deal might not be the best bet. So I started teaching my first camera guy how to get his first deal. And in six months, he did 25 deals. And then he quit. He's like, what's the deal? I'm gonna go do my own thing. And Trevon's trying to do the same thing too. So if you guys are watching this on YouTube, say, good luck. Trevon, please quit working for Pace after you get your first deal. Watching all of that happen inspired him to start asking me questions. And I thought, hey, man, we've got a two hour drive to get down to Tucson today. Why don't we answ your questions in real time? There's a lot of different ways to get a deal, but you got to ask the question of who you are and where you're at currently. So, Trevon, yesterday, he asked me a question about, hey, if I'm a wholesaler, do I need the mls? And I said, no, you don't. In fact, there's ML, there's. There's software now that is way better than the mls. The best one that I really like is called deal sauce. Get saucy deals.com. that is a thousand times better than the MLS. And I'll tell you the first reason, reason why it's better than the mls. When you are a licensed real estate agent, you are licensed in one area of a city. Not one, not one state, one area of a city. So right now, if I'm a Phoenix, Arizona Real estate agent and I'm driving down to Tucson to look at a multifamily deal. Guess what I don't have access to in Tucson? The mls. That is mind blowing to me because real estate agents spend about $2,000 a on having the MLS and they're only allowed to have it in one area. You want another area, it's another $2,000 a year. But why do people think the MLS is awesome? It's because it used to be before the invention of Velcro and before the invention of like glue and tape. It is by far the most antiquated real estate software on the planet. It does not actually help you if you buy the proper software. Guess what Dilsource does? I can MLS data, right? So all the information from the MLS, I can get all of that nationwide for $97 a month. So I've got all the MLS data nationwide without a license for half the price. I get the, I think it's 1700 locations that the MLS has. We get all 1700 pieces of MLS in one place for 97 bucks a month without a licen. So the best, better question is why would you want the mls? The only reason the MLS is beneficial today is for real estate agents.
Okay?
Real estate agents put their houses on the MLS and other real estate agents go to the MLS to show it to their family buyers.
Okay?
Family buyer is somebody who's going to buy the house and live in it, make babies, have a life in it. They're not real estate investors. 99% of real estate transactions on the MLS are not real estate investors. They are families looking for a house. Why doesn't the chicken sell its own eggs at Walmart? Why does it need a farmer? The chicken doesn't even know Walmart exists. Okay, same thing with the seller. The seller has no idea where the marketplace is to sell their houses. Of course they could do for sale by owner, but the effectiveness is so, so, so low. And so the world has basically used the MLS for the longest time. Listing agent, buyer's agent. Do you know the difference between those two people? A listing agent is the person who sells a family's home. A buyer's agent is some who helps a family find a house to buy.
Make sense?
How do these agents find each other to strike a deal? That's the mls. Okay, so it's basically the dating site for real estate agents to be like, hey, my family's looking for a four bed, two bath house under 500,000. They go into the MLS, they look for the search and it pops up the other agents listings. Okay, so a listing agent is the seller's representative, the person who is representing the house. These things are just big beginner terminology. And a lot of people are going to be like, get past this. And why is it important for you to understand these things is because if you want to go watch a basketball game, don't you think it's important to understand the positions and why certain people are playing on the court in certain spots and why the big tall guy is down in the middle and why the skinny fast guy is up at the three point line? Like don't you want to understand those roles? Okay, so when you're in a real estate transaction, you want to know who everybody is and why they're playing that, okay, the seller pays both commissions. This also incentivize a family to go buy for them to buy more houses, right? Because if a buyer goes, well, cool, I don't have to, I don't have to pay the agent that's representing me. Like think about that. My wife right now is representing my sister on a, on a transaction. She's the buyer's agent for my sister. So my sister's looking for a house. She hires, real hires Laura. Why? Because Laura has access to the mls, okay? These dude families have no idea where to find a deal. Just like you currently don't know where to find a deal. I told you, deal sauce. But what does that mean? Click, click, click. You don't know what to click on, but that's where you go to find a deal. These families that are looking to buy a house, they go, oh, I'm going to go to Zillow. I'm going to scroll through Zillow for a year. Get inspired. Find out what zip codes and areas I want to be in. Go mess around on calculators, see what I could afford. And then they finally call a real estate agent. And then the real estate agent goes, all right, now I'll give you access to the MLS data because Zillow is bull data.
Okay?
A lot of times you go on Zillow and they've already sold the house that you're looking at. It's like three week old. That's bull. Zillow is a waste of time. It is only for retail families that are like, let me scroll through Zillow. It's a waste, waste of time. So that buyer says, hey, real estate agent Laura, my wife, in this situation, will you please take the filter of the types of houses we've been looking for and go and see what's on the mls. The only reason I need the MLS if I'm an investor is if I'm selling a property to a family like my sister and I'm looking for that type of buyer, in what transaction would that be? That would be a fix and FL flip. I'm flipping it in a renovated state to a family.
Make sense.
I'm not going to go put a hundred thousand dollars into a house I'm gonna rent. Ain't gonna happen. So the only reason a real estate investor in 2025 or 2026 should use the MLS is if they are finding a retail buyer. Retail buyer is who always a family. Am I a retail buyer? Hell no.
Okay.
I mean, I am, but like, did I find my farm in mls? Hell no. All the best deals are off market. Okay. What's the difference between off market and on market? On market is a seller wakes up and says, I want to sell my house. They go and hire a real estate agent to list their property on. The MLS is why we call it a listing agent.
Make sense.
That house is on market. It is actively trying to be sold that is on market.
Does that make sense?
If a seller's in foreclosure, let's say, and I find a house that's vacant in foreclosure, on deal sauce, and there's no real estate agent involved, Is that on market or off market?
There you go.
Off market.
Okay.
So these little words like on market, off market, they make a big difference in this game. A very, very, very big difference in this game. So when people go, I want to go find a deal, I will ask you your personality style. If you're afraid to talk to people, then going off market is not a good fit for. Because you're calling sellers directly that do not have their house for sale. Okay, this is an interesting one because you're a camera guy. If I go on Facebook marketplace and I Type in Sony A7S3, or I type in blah blah, blah, or ebay, what is that? On market or off market? It's on market, right? It's on. It's listed on something.
Right.
On some sort of marketplace, we know that those sellers want to sell.
Correct?
Cool. So I go and have a conversation with somebody. I'm not asking them, would you like to sell? In fact, that would be a really stupid question.
Correct.
It's like we already know. Okay, so in the no one Left behind challenge, what am I teaching the agents to do or the newbies to do? Off market or on market? On Market. Because it's way easier to call an agent who is already representing a seller who has already decided to sell their property. Okay, so let's go back to the camera example. If somebody that's afraid to talk to sellers of cameras has two opportunities. Go on Facebook marketplace, where you know their price, you know how long they've been listed, versus go knock doors and go, hey, I know you have a Sony A7S3. I saw you walking around with it. Would you like to sell? Which one's going to be easier? The advantage is what for on market versus off market. What's the advantage? Number one advantage is we already know they want to sell. It's like, if I want to go find a girl to date, do I go to a supermarket? And I guess. And I start saying, hey, cute girl buying apples and avocados right now. You're really beautiful. I'd like to take you on a date. Or should I just go to a dating app? Okay, so do you see the difference between on market and off market? On market is I know you're trying to date right now. You're on Tinder or Bumble or whatever. You're there. You are on a platform, the MLS of dating. You are on market, you know what you want and you are trying to get it right versus you go to a grocery store. You're. You're picking line has got to be fire. Your ability to communicate with that woman who is currently off market, okay, she's not on Tinder, she's in the supermarket and you just notice her. That is a higher level skill. Do we agree with that?
Absolutely.
It's the same thing with sellers. If the seller is in foreclosure, they have a vacant house. We can see that as a filter. On Dill's house, the seller might be struggling, trying to keep up with their payments, but they're trying to keep their house. That's why they haven't put it on market yet. They're like, no, I'm trying to keep the house. I don't want to try and list it. The second they're late on one payment, there's phases of foreclosure. There's 30, 60, 90 days late. Doesn't mean they're in foreclosure. It just means they're late on their payments. I have access to that data and deal sauce. MLS does not. It's like this person's repeatedly late on their mortgage payments. That's data I can buy.
Okay.
Then when the bank is fed up with that person, they go into what's called pre foreclosure, which is the process where the bank sends a letter and then that becomes public information. Everybody that wants to know that can know that the 30, 60, 90 days before they get the default letter, that's like pre, pre foreclosure that only investors get access to because we spend the money to get access to it. Okay, Deal Sauce has all of these things. So when somebody is in the foreclosure process, that means they've received the default letter from the bank going, you're in default, we're going to take your house from you unless you catch up your payments. And in Maricopa county where we live, it's like three to four months that they have to figure this process out. And a lot of them don't go with an agent because they go, oh crap, I don't have enough time to sell through an agent. So they just start taking offers from investors because they have lack of time.
