Inman

ListHub distributing listings overseas

International image via Shutterstock.

ListHub — the real estate listing syndication platform owned and run by realtor.com operator Move Inc. — has created an avenue for its brokerage partners to send their listings to 19 countries in a deal with Swiss-based listing publisher EdenHome.

“ListHub Global,” which launched today with Prudential New Jersey Properties in the new network, is the firm’s first foray into the international syndication market.

The deal with EdenHome allows brokerages currently syndicating with ListHub to pay to syndicate their listings to the 23 portals that are in the EdenHome Network, including websites targeting markets in Brazil, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Luxemburg, Morocco, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

ListHub, founded in 2008 and acquired by Move in 2010, currently syndicates to 132 U.S. publishers, including Zillow and Trulia. The company has been focused solely on the domestic market, but rising demand from the platform’s 48,000 partner brokerages compelled ListHub to explore international syndication, said General Manager Luke Glass.

Glass said ListHub chose to partner with EdenHomes, which translates listing descriptions to the appropriate language and provides the correct currency conversion for all listings in its system, because of the platform’s data security.

For example, listings in the EdenHome network are never distributed or leave EdenHome’s servers. EdenHome shares listings in its network to its 23 partner portals by framing the search experience or showing them via a real-time application programming interface (API).

With the partnership, ListHub, which also syndicates listings from 432 multiple listing services and individual agents, is focused on data accuracy and protection — just as it is domestically, Glass said.

A ListHub study, released today, found that 75 percent of a sample of 200 listings from two international portals had inaccuracies in at least one of five “core” data fields:

  • For-sale status
  • Price
  • Address
  • Number of bedrooms
  • Number of bathrooms

Tracking listings in foreign languages like Russian can be a challenge, Glass said. To help brokerages track where their listings are syndicated through ListHub Global, ListHub has built a back-end tool allowing brokerages to see all their overseas listings in one place.

Smaller brokerages with one to five agents will pay $50 per month to send listings overseas via ListHub Global, Glass said. Larger brokerages will pay more, with fees on a sliding scale that’s capped at $600 per month for firms with between 200 and 300 agents. ListHub says it will negotiate pricing with firms with more than 300 agents.

ListHub is looking at expanding ListHub global to Asia and South America next, Glass said.

Move launched an international version of realtor.com, realtor.com international, in 2011.