Remote Manila apartment search from Dublin: how reliable is REALTOR.ca?

A

asha.reed

Buyer
Established
I’m in Dublin and have been using REALTOR.ca to search for an apartment around Manila. The coverage has been useful, and I particularly valued the closing-cost information, but duplicate listings, stale availability and inconsistent floor-area figures make comparisons harder than expected.

The main thing I cannot judge is freshness: there is little clarity about when a listing was last confirmed or what happens after contacting the advertiser. How have others found the mobile filters, map pins, saved alerts and advertiser response stage?
 
For a remote search, I’d treat freshness as more important than the number of results. When contacting an advertiser, ask whether the apartment is still available, when its details were last updated, and exactly what the quoted floor area includes. Also note whether apparent duplicates share the same photos, price and contact details. That will tell you whether you’re seeing repeated adverts or genuinely separate units.
 
I wouldn’t dismiss duplicates automatically. Two entries can look identical while differing in floor, furnishing or terms. The bigger danger is using the map pin as proof of the exact building location when it may only indicate a wider area.

Are the inconsistent floor areas attached to identical photos and advertiser details, Yara? If so, that is a stronger warning than a small pin discrepancy.
 
Bruno’s distinction matters, but buyers should not have to reconstruct every listing manually. I’d make a shortlist and compare each apartment outside the portal in a simple table: stated area, price, location description, advertiser, last confirmation and reply received. Keep screenshots too, because that makes later status or price changes visible even if no clear history or sold-record link is provided.
 
One addition: test saved-search alerts against a fresh manual search using the same filters. If new or changed listings appear manually but not in the alert, don’t rely on notifications alone. On mobile, use only the filters that materially affect the decision; too many narrow filters can hide apartments with incomplete floor-area fields.
 
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