Zillow has joined the Real Estate Standards Organization, a nonprofit group that aims to standardize real estate data to make it more accurate, consistent and accessible so that multiple listing services, vendors and third parties can develop better and faster real estate applications and platforms at lower cost.
“Accurate and timely real estate data has always been a top priority for Zillow, and RESO has done a fantastic job spearheading an industrywide effort to standardize data and improve collaboration,” said Errol Samuelson, Zillow chief industry development officer, in a statement.
“Better and more widely adopted data standards mean increased data accuracy — and that benefits everyone from agents and brokers to buyers and sellers. We are proud to become a member and look forward to helping shape how the real estate industry handles data.”
RESO rolled out a “data dictionary” in 2012 to unify the definitions of terms used to describe properties by industry players and updated it last November. If MLSs adopt the standards, the reasoning goes, vendors will no longer have to spend additional time and money coding each product to match varying MLS data definitions.
“I am thrilled to have Zillow join RESO and look forward to their support and participation in the important work that RESO is undertaking,” said Rebecca Jensen, chair of RESO’s board of directors, in a statement. “Zillow’s expertise and influence will be extremely valuable in ensuring that data standards continue to be adopted throughout the industry.”
Trulia’s vice president of industry services, Alon Chaver, joined RESO as a board member in December, not long after Craig Cheatham, president and CEO of the brokerage network The Realty Alliance, accepted an invitation to join RESO’s board of directors in October.