Bay County Association of REALTORS

To all Bay County Association Members,

Thanks for taking the time to review this very important note.

Sub Areas on MAP now! Do a search in the MLS for one of your properties. Look at the Agent Full report. What sub area do you show the home in? Now click on the address and the map will open up. If you don't get the map then you should ask your Broker or Nick for help. Now look just under the map and you will see 3 new choices. MLS Area, Sub Area and School Zones. Click on Sub Area and then Update Map. The map changes color as the new map layer is overlayed. Now click on the Return Info button and then click on the Red Star. A small window will pop up and tell you what sub area you are looking at. The big question is, "Is it the same sub area you said it was in?" These sub areas are the same as they have been for years. If you don't put your listing in the correct area you are hurting your seller and corrupting the database. So that all your fellow members can find your home when they search by sub area you must input it correctly. Thanks for your help in keeping the database at a high level of accuracy!

Look at this map.

We did a search of active listings in Sub Area [15]-Bayou George. There were 29 matches. We selected ALL and then clicked on the button at the bottom of the search screen 'Map Listings'. 22 properties were placed on the map. Only 9 are in the correct area. Twelve listings physically show on the map that they are in sub area [14]-East Deer Point/Beer Creek. One shows in the sub area [02]-Hiland Park/Cedar Grove.

Let's look at one more example.

There are 18 active listings today that say they are in sub ares [14]- East Deer Point/Bear Creek. Only 15 of those are shown when you select to 'Map Listings'. 10 of those are in the correct area and 5 are not.

Many years ago the Bay County Association of REALTORS® divided the county into 17 sub areas for the MLS. When we had printed books the map was in the front of the book for easy reference. We have not had the books for a number of years now and without that reference we have started to forget where the lines are drawn. We now have a new map layer, as shown in the pictures above, that gives us a visual representation of the sub areas again. If each person looks at the map of their own listings and turns on the sub area map layer they will see immediately if they should put their listing into a different area.

As you can see on the map, if you are headed north and turn left off of Hwy 231 onto Hwy 2301 or Deer Point Dam Rd (Hwy 2302/Hwy 2311) you are not in Bayou George, you are in sub area [14] East Deer Point/Bear Creek. If you turn right off of Hwy 231 you are in [15] Bayou George. Keep in mind that this is not changing anything about where the sub area boundaries are drawn. It is exactly as it has been for many, many years. All of your fellow members are looking to you to be sure that your listings are correct just as they are going to make sure their own are correct.

All areas have this problem to some extent, not just north on Hwy 231. These were just the easiest to show. Check all of your listings even if you know they are right. We are sure that all of the members who input the above listings thought they were in the correct area. This would be a great topic for your next sales meeting.