Ever find yourself struggling to remember a full lake name, street or neighborhood while searching in Flexmls? Wildcard searching is your tool to uncover more results with less guesswork!
Normally, when you enter a street name in Quick Search, Flexmls only returns results that start with that word. For example, searching for “wood” will bring up streets like Woodlawn or Woodstar, but not Northwood or Hollywood.
That’s where wildcards come in! You can use different characters to improve your searching capabilities.
This is extremely popular when you are looking for lake properties and want to make sure you spell the lake’s name correctly. There are also other scenarios you can use the wildcard search, as you can see below.
Asterisk (*)
*wood → Finds streets that end with “wood” (e.g., Dogwood, Northwood, Hollywood).
wood* → Finds streets that start with “wood” (e.g., Woodlawn, Woodstar, Woodward).
*wood* → Finds streets where “wood” appears anywhere (e.g., Dogwoods, Woodhaven).
Question Mark
Use a question mark (?) in a search term to indicate a single wildcard character. You can use this method to help compensate for common misspellings of words. For example, type *gran?te* in a Remarks field to search for remarks about granite countertops. The search results will include all listings that include the word granite, as well as listings that include misspellings such as granate.
Multiple Search Terms
To search for two terms together (and logic), type the terms with asterisks around each word, then type a comma, then enter the terms again in the reverse order. Results will include both terms, in either order. For example, to search a Remarks field for the terms vaulted and granite, type *vaulted**granite*,*granite**vaulted*.