Jerold & Terry Smith do a good job of covering this topic on their REALTOR® blog . With various new competitors coming onto the market trying to forge their own holy grail of a unified system it will be interesting to see how NAR and the various MLS systems react.
Real estate investors in some areas will greet this topic with a yawn...by the time a property hits MLS you're looking at a guaranteed negative cashflow investment. In markets like this you need to find deals at significantly below market value to make the number work (short sales, foreclosure auctions, REO's, etc.) But in undervalued areas where the rent-to-property value ratio is high you can still pluck some deals out of MLS if you keep your eyes on the ball.
But competition can still be fierce. I recently invested in a single family house that I'd bookmarked in the Houston Association of Realtors' excellent site www.HAR.com. I got an update that the price of the property had been dropped by 10%. This put the property within my investment threshhold. I sent in an offer immediately; within the hour.
Mine was the fifth one they got.
I did end up getting the deal, though. The guy who originally one didn't come though with financing and had to back out. My offer wasn't the next best one, but it must have looked like the bird-in-the-hand to the seller.
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