Update 11/16/2018

GLVAR changes their mind on allowing MLS Feeds to Zillow and Listhub

I read a Facebook post today that the Greater Las Vegas Association of REALTORS®(GLVAR) was going to cease syndicating to Zillow and Listhub on in January of 2019. They evidently did the same thing with Realtor.com a year ago. Here is a Video from GLVAR discussing syndication.

Update: 11/10/2018

There WAS a video here, the same YouTube video shared within the Inman News article, but it looks like GLVAR took it off of YouTube or made it private. Why would that be? My personal opinion is it clearly communicated a greater alliance to the big brokers and not what might be best for the home sellers.

Personally? I don’t buy it. The consumer comes first. I look at it this way. If I am a Realtor® and take a listing in the Las Vegas/Henderson area, I want that listing broadcast to the world. I want that house to sell as quickly as possible to serve my client. If that sale is the result of some Realtor® getting a lead from Zillow, I would not care where the sale came from. The seller wants to sell their home as quickly as possible. The seller doesn’t care about the politics. They don’t care whether the agents or brokers like Zillow or not. They just want their house sold.

Consumers looking to buy a house want to jump online and start searching whether they have retained a buyers agent or not. Based upon research I conducted online:

How many visitors does Zillow have each month: 188 million (8/26/18)

Percentage of us homes that have been viewed on Zillow: 80% (5/19/18)

Number of homes on Zillow updated by users: 80 Million (8/26/18)

Number of U.S. homes listed in the Zillow database: 110 Million homes (8/26/18)

It’s safe to say that Zillow is a dominant home search engine and any consumer or Realtor® would want their home showing up in their search results.

Now, just as stated in the Inman article that posted today, the response from Zillow is spot on. If a small broker wants their listings to be in the search results, they may have to spend tens of thousands of dollars for a custom API to do so. I think there is probably some truth that the big money brokers want to get in the way of the small brokerages.

What if you are an agent with a small brokerage and on the listing appointment the client asks if their property is going to be on Zillow? When you tell them no, what effect will that have on getting the listing?

Full disclosure. I am not a Realtor®. I do however, act as the marketing coordinator for a number of teams throughout the U.S., including a very successful team in Las Vegas. I will need to find out if my team’s brokerage plans on feeding to Zillow. If not, how will this effect my client?

CJ Hays, Marketing Emancipator for Agent Reputation

These opinions are my own.

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