17 Dec Some Real Estate Agencies Withholding Listings from National Portals
Last year, one of the country’s largest real estate brokerages said they were pulling their listings from national real estate portals like Realtor.com and Trulia. Their gripe? The advertisements that almost seem to compete with the listings. These advertisements pay the bills for third-party listing portals though, and is a big decision for real estate agents to decide whether or not they want to continue working with these websites.
One reason to leave: to redirect business and increase traffic on individual real estate websites. Many agents are moving away from the large, national advertising model, and are focusing on growing their business organically and locally. Edina Realty, the real estate brokerage that pioneered this movement, says their decision has been great for business after closing off their flow of listings to Trulia in November 2011 and Realtor.com in May. By doing this, though, home shoppers can no longer see a snapshot of the market because listings are missing from Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com, the three most popular national real estate portals.
Realtor.com is in somewhat of a unique position because of their agreement with the National Association of Realtors. They say it’s more uncommon for brokerages to sever ties with them as a result. According to Realtor.com, Edina Realty and ARG Abbot Realty Group out of San Diego are the only two brokerages currently withholding data from their site. According to Edina Realty’s website, visits increased 21.7% between July 2011 and July 2012, and unique visitors were up 17% at the same time.
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