In my latest episode of Corr Values, I sat down with Robert Reffkin, Chairman and CEO of Compass International Holdings, and @properties Christie’s International Real Estate Co-CEO Thad Wong to talk about how major portals use listing data to channel buyer leads and control seller marketing strategies, and what it all means for agents and their clients.
What really stood out to me from our talk wasn’t the headline-grabbing news but rather some of the issues beneath the surface that agents and brokers should be paying more attention to.
4 takeaways from Thad Wong and Robert Reffkin
Here are four takeaways from our conversation:
1. Sellers deserve control over their own data
At its core, this is about who controls listing data and distribution. Is it the homesellers, who own the data and the underlying asset, and their agents, who have the relationships, secure the listings and pay for the marketing? Or is it a third-party platform that plays no direct role in the transaction?
Agents have become the cheapest content creators in the world. They invest their time and money to produce the data, only to give it away to a platform like Zillow that makes money from it. Without agent-generated data in the form of listings, Zillow would not exist.
2. Transparency works both ways
We can all agree that consumers deserve transparency. If Zillow’s position is truly rooted in transparency, they should be held to the same standard.
But a recent study at the Wharton School revealed nearly universal confusion among consumers when they clicked the “Contact Agent” button on Zillow.com, with 99.7 percent of prospective homebuyers believing they were contacting the listing agent, not an agent paying for a lead.
This misdirection is so fundamental to Zillow’s business that as Thad points out, “Zillow will not let me give them money to put my agent’s name, face and our brokerage on [our] listing.”
3. Sellers matter
Half the market consists of homesellers. Agents who represent them have a fiduciary duty to help them achieve the best possible outcome, per their objectives. That’s one reason why MLS-owned private listing networks, such as MRED’s Private Listing Network (PLN), are such an effective seller tool.
In Chicagoland, the PLN allows sellers to test pricing, build demand and create urgency around their listing, while still generating exposure to agents and their clients, resulting in statistically higher sales prices.
On the other hand, if agents are required to market listings on platforms that may erode a buyer’s perception of value, how does that serve sellers and our fiduciary duty to them?
4. A wake-up call
What happens when for-profit portals wind up superseding the MLS? To illustrate where that road leads, consider the StreetEasy portal in New York, which began charging agents $1 per day for rental listings after Zillow acquired the business in 2013. The next year, the price went up to $2, then $3.
Today, Zillow charges $7 per day in its standard package to list an apartment on StreetEasy.
The lesson is simple: When we lose control of our data, we eventually lose control of the economics that surround it.
Homes belong to sellers. The decision of how, when and where a property is marketed should belong to them as well.
Home search belongs to buyers. They deserve transparency, accurate information and confidence that the person on the other end of their inquiry is who they think it is.
The client relationship belongs to agents. It’s built through expertise, trust, investment and fiduciary responsibility. If we lose sight of this, we risk handing control to entities whose interests don’t align with these principles.
Once that control is gone, it’s extraordinarily difficult to get it back. That’s why this conversation matters.
Corr Values is available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
