The struggle for control over where and how listings are displayed has shifted to a new battleground, with Zillow and Trulia now pushing an all out-effort to get multiple listing services to cut out the middleman and send them their listings directly – and so far local MLSs are proving receptive.
For years, many brokers have used syndication services to help them choose where their agents’ listings should appear. The services act as middlemen – the broker sends their listings to the syndicator, and can then pick and choose what additional sites the listings should appear on, from the major third-party portals like Zillow and Trulia to sites like Homes.com or HGTV’s Frontdoor.com, among hundreds of others. The dominant syndication service has long been ListHub, which was purchased by Move Inc., the corporate parent of Realtor.com, in 2010.
Move itself was acquired late last year by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. So when Zillow announced earlier this month that its contract with ListHub would not be renewed and it would no longer be receiving listings from the service as of this April, many industry observers thought this might be a classic example of Murdoch’s brand of hardball, cutting off a competitor from a major source of listings and potentially providing a boost to Realtor.com, which already has direct feeds from the vast majority of MLSs in the country, through its affiliation with the National Association of Realtors.
Shifting Allegiances
But Zillow certainly seems to have prepared for the move: Earlier this month, it announced the creation of a new “data dashboard” that would enable brokers to send listings to Zillow directly and monitor their performance on the site – as well as the ability to opt out of having certain listings appear. And it’s currently undertaking a campaign to persuade the country’s 900-odd MLSs to set up direct feeds, which automatically upload all of an MLS’s listings to the site.
MLSs seem to be warming to the idea. Massachusetts’s largest, MLS-PIN, has been setting up direct feeds instead of using syndication services for over a decade, said CEO Kathy Condon, and has had one with Zillow “since they came into the market,” she said. “We do it all ourselves,” she said, since by coming to an independent arrangement with each display site, MLS PIN has greater control over how their listings are displayed.
That appeal is beginning to impact smaller, Realtor-affiliated MLSs as well as the large independents. The Cape Cod and Islands Association of Realtors’ MLS had been working on setting up a direct feed with Zillow for months, even before the breakup with ListHub was announced, said Cape Cod and Islands MLS CEO Ryan Castle.
“Our members wanted greater control over where their data went,” Castle said. “And we felt that by coming to an arrangement with Zillow, they’d have that control.”
If the MLS was willing to set up a direct feed, Zillow was willing to offer certain concessions, such as more prominently displaying the listing broker’s name and contact information, Castle explained. In addition, though the direct feed any changes to the listing made on the MLSs are updated much more frequently – Zillow aims to refresh its feeds every 15 minutes, Castle said. Listings syndicated through ListHub might take several hours to update, meaning that when a listing was taken off the market or had its price change, agents would still be fielding calls from eager buyers armed with the inaccurate info – a source of frustration for both parties, especially in a hot market.
“That was the biggest thing. People were getting upset when the data on Zillow wasn’t accurate. We felt that by having a direct relationship with Zillow, we could go to them when the data was inaccurate and get them to change it,” said Castle. “I think it was mutually beneficial in that regard.”
Regarding A Monopoly
The state’s third MLS, affiliated with the Berkshire County Board of Realtors, is also leaning towards setting up a direct feed. Approving such a feed is on the agenda for the group’s next board meeting; members have been discussing whether to go forward with the idea ever since news of the Zillow/ListHub breakup was announced, said Berkshire County MLS CEO Sandy Carroll.
As long as brokers have the ability to opt out on a listing-by-listing basis, the board is likely to forward with creating a direct feed to Zillow. “We leave the decision in the brokers’ hands. It’s our responsibility to provide the conduit” so their listings can be displayed where they wish, said Carroll.
But critics fear that by switching to direct feeds, MLSs will only help entrench sites like Zillow and Trulia as powerful players in real estate search, making it more difficult for agents’ and brokers’ own sites to compete. Zillow and Trulia, whose merger plan is currently being approved by the Federal Trade Commission, combined account for almost 71 percent of real estate search traffic, according to a report by internet data tracker ComScore. While boosting the accuracy and freshness of their listings through direct feeds may cut down on calls from confused buyers, some agents worry that MLSs are giving away one of the competitive advantages – accuracy – that agents’ own sites have in real estate search.
Email: csullivan@thewarrengroup.com
