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Starting in June, Zillow’s new listing standards, which prohibit from its platform listings that are not placed on the multiple listing service within 24 hours of being publicly marketed, will also be applied to listings advertised on the company’s New York City portal StreetEasy, but adapted for the metropolitan market.
This means that listings that violate the new standard by not being sent to StreetEasy within 24 hours will still show up on StreetEasy’s platform — but the agents and teams behind those listings will lose access to StreetEasy’s tools and programs.
Zillow made the announcement on Thursday, three weeks after first announcing its new access standards, which have received public support from major companies like HomeSmart, eXp Realty and Redfin, and drawn criticism from other industry players in favor of office exclusives.
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The move reinforces Zillow’s commitment to the belief that a property that is marketed to some buyers should be marketed to all buyers, a blog post said.
Caroline Burton | StreetEasy
“StreetEasy and Zillow have always advocated for fair and equitable access to real estate information — it’s what we were built on,” StreetEasy General Manager Caroline Burton said in a statement sent to Inman. “Sellers deserve to have their listing seen by the widest audience, and buyers deserve to see all of the homes on the market. It’s the only way they’ll have a fair shot at buying one. Hidden listings harm buyers, sellers, agents and the real estate ecosystem. It’s not right, and it’s not what consumers want.”
Zillow elaborated that the rule, as on its own portal, is applicable to listings that are subject to an exclusive for-sale listing agreement between an agent and seller. When any of those listings are publicly marketed — be it through email, social media or on a brokerage website “with the lure of exclusive inventory behind a consumer registration” — it must be submitted to StreetEasy within one business day of being marketed, or the offending agent will be unable to access StreetEasy’s agent tools and features.
New York City listings that do not abide by Zillow’s listing standards will also not be published on Zillow or Trulia when those standards go into effect later this month.
The company said it would communicate a specific day for implementation of the new rule sometime before June and share further details about the rule then.
“Our listing access standards ensure accountability, giving all New Yorkers an equal opportunity at homeownership and enabling agents to better serve their clients,” Burton continued. “Anything less risks sending the NYC housing market backwards. We’re committed to supporting brokerages and agents putting the consumer first, and we’ll be rolling out new offerings to help them win business and market their listings in new ways to the widest audience of buyers in NYC.”
Those agents and teams who do not abide by the standard will lose access to StreetEasy Experts, StreetEasy Concierge and Zillow Premier Agent in New York City, Zillow further explained. They will also not be able to access new listing and agent marketing tools to be rolled out on StreetEasy soon, the company teased, without specifying what those tools are.
In the blog post, which was published on Thursday, Zillow and StreetEasy said they support the rare cases where a seller has legitimate cause to keep a listing completely private out of concerns for their safety or otherwise. However, the companies stressed that such cases are “the exception, not the norm.”
They also said that sellers who fall into this category should sign a disclosure form acknowledging that they might be sacrificing sales price and time by privately shopping their property. EXp Realty rolled out such a form in recent weeks, which they made publicly available to all agents regardless of brokerage affiliation through their website.
Correction: Listings that violate Zillow and StreetEasy’s new standard will still be published on StreetEasy, but agents representing those listings will lose access to tools including StreetEasy Experts, StreetEasy Concierge and Zillow Premier Agent.
