Three Austin, Texas-based brokerages are feeding their listings directly to Zillow after the local multiple listing service stopped helping member brokers provide listings to the portal in April.
JB Goodwin Realtors, Re/Max Capital City and Turnquist Partners Realtors have joined more than 1,000 brokers around the U.S. in signing up for Zillow “Pro for Brokers.”
The program rewards brokers for sending their listings to Zillow with a logo, linkback and prominent placement of their listings agents’ contact information on the property detail pages of the listings the brokers represent.
“JB Goodwin Realtors has taken the step to be pro-consumer for our sellers and landlords by making sure their properties are on the most visited real estate site in the U.S. — Zillow,” said Buddy Schilling, president of JB Goodwin Realtors, in a statement.
The move follows a decision by the Austin Board of Realtors (ABoR) to stop feeding members’ listings to national listing portals through a third-party syndicator, ListHub.
The association’s board, which operates the MLS in the Austin region, Austin/Central Texas Realty Information Service (ACTRIS), voted last fall to end ABoR’s agreement with ListHub, citing concerns about unethical business practices and inaccurate listing data on consumer websites not affiliated with a Realtor trade group. In addition to timeliness and accuracy issues, some brokerages object to advertisements and lead forms that generate business for agents with competing brokerages that sometimes appear next to listings they represent on national search portals.
ListHub aggregates listings from hundreds of MLSs, and distributes them to national portals like Zillow and Trulia, allowing listing brokers to choose which sites they wish to syndicate listings to. After ABoR stopped feeding listings to ListHub on April 30, members were free to continue providing their listings to third-party portals by other means.
Trulia responded to ABoR’s move by agreeing to abide by “Realtor-friendly” data quality standards developed by the association that also require portals to display contact information for the listing agent and broker and a link to the listing broker, agent or the MLS website property detail page.
Last month, ABoR began feeding listing data directly to Trulia as a member of the portal’s “Data Connect” program, which provides enhanced branding for participating brokers’ agents.
Zillow has relied on ListHub for about half the listings on the site, according to a March declaration by Rachel Glaser, the CFO of ListHub parent company Move Inc. But Zillow Pro for Brokers has grown rapidly in recent months, climbing from about 200 members last fall to more than 1,000 in May.
Listing portals like to acquire listings directly from brokers and MLSs because direct feeds allow portals to update listings more frequently than they can if they receive listings through syndication platforms like Point2 or ListHub.
“Given how quickly inventory is selling, establishing this direct feed with Zillow guarantees these brokers and their agents that their listings will be as up-to-date as possible, benefiting their sellers and attracting more prospective buyers,” said Errol Samuelson, Zillow chief industry relations officer, in a statement.
With a direct feed, Zillow can update listings as frequently as every 15 minutes, Zillow spokeswoman Amanda Woolley previously told Inman News.