Inman

Zillow secures direct feed from big Georgia MLS

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Georgia Multiple Listing Service, serving nearly 27,000 members with a total of over 54,000 listings, is the latest large MLS to sign up to send Zillow its listings in a direct feed.

“The direct agreement with Zillow gives our members the opportunity to decide on how to best market their listings,” said Richard Boone, CEO of Georgia MLS, in a statement. “This agreement ensures the listing data will be timely and accurate, which will represent both our members and their listings in the best possible manner.”

Now that Zillow’s acquisition of its biggest rival, Trulia, has closed, many of the dozens of direct feeds Zillow has with MLSs also revert to Trulia.

When asked whether the listing agreements Zillow has with MLSs will allow it to display those listings on Trulia, Zillow Group CEO Spencer Rascoff said, in most cases, yes. “Most of our listing agreements cover websites that are owned by Zillow,” he told Inman.

As for the 125 MLS agreements Trulia currently has, Zillow Group will have to go through them one by one and amend many of them to turn the feed on to zillow.com, Rascoff said.

Eventually, Zillow Group will have just one listing database that both Zillow and Trulia will tap, but that lies months away as the new entity works to evaluate the separate relationships Zillow and Trulia have with MLSs and other industry players, Rascoff said when Zillow’s acquisition of Trulia closed.

Zillow is currently scrambling to sign direct feed agreements with MLSs and brokers ahead of the April 7 expiration date of its agreement with listing syndication platform ListHub.

Last week Zillow signed a listing agreement with Dallas-based MLS North Texas Real Estate Information Systems Inc.

Zillow also recently landed direct listing feed deals with two Florida MLSs, but one of those deals may get tangled up in litigation.

The Jupiter-Tequesta-Hobe Sound Association of Realtors has said it has the right to send the listings of another association, the Realtors Association of the Palm Beaches, to third parties, including Zillow, but the Palm Beach association disagrees and has warned Zillow that it could take legal action if the portal displays its data without its permission.

Email Paul Hagey.