Get your Realogy listings here!
By Glenn Roberts, Jr., Friday, February 29, 2008.Bookmarking Sites
Real estate brokerage and franchise company Realogy Corp. is casting a very wide net on the 'Net these days, pumping its property listings out to many online sites. The company last year announced distribution agreements to share online property listings information with Google and Trulia, and more recently announced similar agreements to bring hundreds of thousands of property listings to Cyberhomes.com, Zillow.com, AOL, Homescape and FrontDoor, a real estate search site launched by HGTV operator Scripps Networks Interactive. Realogy brands include Century 21, Coldwell Banker, ERA and Sotheby's International Realty, among others.
The Internet is considered by some to be a great equalizer, with big and small companies competing side by side in cyberspace for the same consumers. And there is a movement to create data standards to assist brokers of all sizes in sending out real estate listings content to multiple sites, with online players such as Trulia, Zillow and Yahoo Real Estate on board with the effort. Some third-party companies are already serving as the go-between to assist brokers in dishing out content to a range of online sites.
But do all small real estate companies have the time and resources to supply updated data feeds to these various online sites -- or is this an easier feat for super-sized national brokerage companies? Are smaller companies at any disadvantage here as the larger companies push their real estate listings content out to any and all takers in massive data feeds?
(photo by wchien)
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Submitted by Anonymous on February 29, 2008 - 11:33am.
It's not so much that smaller companies are at a disadvantage - it's the technically challenged (don't know how to do feeds) companies that are at a disadvantage.
If, as a broker, you think you've got enough local market power and traffic that you don't need to do this, then you are fine.
However, over time, if everyone is doing it, will that change your posture?
Submitted by Barbara South on March 3, 2008 - 7:39am.
I guess you could say this is one of the advantages of working with a National organization that can provide you with all the systems and tools, to be successful in your profession.
Submitted by David Gibbons on March 3, 2008 - 12:42pm.
Hi, it's David from Zillow,
This is obviously not a problem for small brokerages that use Zillow. If you can't send us a feed, you can still log in and post a listing on the site like you always could. That said, manual postings can be a struggle to maintain on multiple sites and so another good alternative is to use a distribution service like VFlyer or Postlets that will take care of listings syndication for you.
Submitted by G Dewald | Union Street Media on March 4, 2008 - 2:15pm.
Technology and marketing:
The first commenter is dead on, it's more a matter of working with an internet marketing/technology partner that knows how to handle feeds and automate the submissions (or knowing how to do this in-house). The firm I work for can handle syndications and we have clients ranging from individual agents to multi-office brokers.
Syndication of this sort of content is part of a trajectory of spreading branding beyond the company web site that began with email signatures, progressed up through microsites and blogging and now is getting into syndication.