Zillow - There is no way to search for new construction homes. There’s a separate Zillow page called “New Construction Homes in Myrtle Beach SC,” but its results don’t match our MLS. Also, there’s no way to search specifically for resales.

Realtor.com - "New Construction" is a feature choice, but the test searches for houses, condos, and townhouses produced grossly inaccurate results.

Redfin — "New Construction" is a feature choice for this, but it doesn’t seem to work. The results include older resales as well, and there is no way to choose just resales.

Trulia — "New Construction" is a feature choice. However, its results don’t match MLS, and it does not allow differentiation of stages like BPT’s search.

Zillow and Redfin - Ocean View - “Waterfront” is the only water-related search filter. There are many different types of waterfront views in our area, and since you can’t choose which one, it's basically useless. Other local specialty views are not available either.

Realtor.com - “Ocean View” search results included about half the listings in MLS (which matched BPT). The Lake/Pond View and Golf Course view search results don’t match MLS.

Incidentally, although Zillow and Realtor.com do not have usable filters for Ocean View, they do include “Mountain View” as a choice even though the highest elevation in our area is about 40 feet above sea level.

Zillow - For houses, there’s no way to differentiate between private pools and community pools. Also, the results for “Pool” don’t match MLS. For condos, there’s no way to search for indoor pools (a common and popular feature), and the results don’t match MLS.

Realtor.com - Private Pool - For houses and condos - you can pick pool in a keyword search but it doesn’t specify private or community and the results do not match MLS search results. Community Pool - Houses and Condos - Didn’t match MLS search results.

Redfin - No way to search for indoor pools for condos.

Important local tip - Being able to search by either central air or wall-mounted units is important for condos since many smaller oceanfront condos only have wall units and some buyers prefer central air.

Realtor.com - There’s a feature called “Central Air,” but filtering by it only resulted in 9 homes and 9 condos with central air on the entire Grand Strand, so it's obviously useless. Our search can distinguish these.

Trulia and Redfin - AC (Central/wall)—It just has the feature of “Air Conditioning,” whether a listing has it or not. It does not say what type it is.

Important local tip - There are so few basements in the Myrtle Beach area that it is not even included as a field for agents to choose in MLS when they enter a listing. This is why it does not appear as a feature choice on our search. Our water table is too high, and the land is too flat for basements to be practical. Nevertheless, Zillow, Realtor.com, and Trulia include this as a feature choice, and it produces no matching results.

HOA Fees - Zillow and Trulia each offer a range that is insufficient for condos in our area.

55+ Communities - All four national sites enable you to omit them but not search for them.

Days on Market (in MLS) is not available for Zillow, Realtor.com, or Redfin, but you can search by the number of days on their respective sites. Realtor.com only goes to 30 days.

Realtor.com - Days on market - Days on Realtor.com is available. Only goes to 30.