Fort Lauderdale Real Estate News

Tell Your Real Estate Board

Charge Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com More for Access to Our Listings, Lower Our Dues

Giving Zillow (Trulia, Realtor.com, and the other national websites) essentially free access to our Listings is becoming a hot button topic in the Real Estate Industry. In recent months we are seeing a groundswell growing among Real Estate Agents, and it is time our Realtor Boards began looking out for their membership.

Zillow has become a monster force among these national websites. They are making millions selling ad space so an unrelated Agent's contact info will appear next to a Listing Agent's listing.

For the First Quarter of 2015 Zillow reported pro forma revenue of $162 Million. This is after acquiring Trulia for $2.5 Billion.

This is money made basically on the backs of all the Listing Agents in the country, who must do their own marketing. In addition, Real Estate Agents pay large annual dues to their Real Estate Boards. We pay to support the MLS system. We pay dues to our local boards, our state boards, and the National Association of Realtors - which licenses Move, Inc. (recently acquired by Rupert Murdoch) to operate Realtor.com - who also sells ad space next to your listings so other agents can receive any leads your listing might generate.

Does that sound right?

Now we live in a cynical age, have become conditioned to getting screwed by hypocritical bureaucratic corporate entities, but your local Real Estate Board, not to mention the "National Association of Realtors" should be looking out for their membership. Our dues pay large executive salaries. These executives should be representing the best interests of their membership.

We all know the explosion of information technology has revolutionized Real Estate. The MLS used to be a little booklet that was printed every week or two. You filled out contracts by hand, physically drove them over to customers for signatures. In the late 90s we were still using White-Out. Now everything's online instantly. I remember when fax machines were hailed as a revolutionary development, because you no longer had to overnight contracts to customers who were out of state. Today we produce contracts with online software, email them to customers all over the world for electronic signatures.

The point is that as technology evolves we must adjust.

Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com have flourished by taking advantage of an opening which should now get plugged. They carved themselves out a space in the market, exploited it. It was smart. It was good business. Good business - for THEM. But now it is time Real Estate Agents across the country, through their local boards, adjusted.

To do this your local Real Estate Board must start charging these national real estate websites a fair price for access to our Listings. With this additional revenue they should lower the dues they charge their members. Many of my colleagues, cynically accustomed to getting screwed, scoff at the notion our Board will actually use any additional revenue to lower dues. Still, I pay something like $300 a year for MLS access and support, and I see no reason why increased revenue from these national websites shouldn't take a chunk out of that.

This is the subject of much discussion between Agents around my Brokerage. Presumably the same applies to many of you, especially more active Realtors.

The argument I always hear is that basically we are stuck with Zillow. They are huge, and if you get a Listing and you do not consent to syndication you are doing your Seller a great disservice because his Listing will not be circulated as widely as possible.

That's Not Thinking It Through

I work in Fort Lauderdale. I am a member of the Fort Lauderdale Board. If my Board ever mustered the intelligence and fortitude to insist Zillow (and the other national Real Estate websites) pay a fair price for access to our Listings - and Zillow refused - what would happen? Connect the dots. People would go on Zillow and not find Listings in Fort Lauderdale. Does that mean they would forget about Fort Lauderdale? Well, no. Somebody interested in Real Estate in my city would simply go looking for other websites that had these Listings.

The same would apply to almost any other city - Atlanta, Dallas, Peoria… Wherever. If somebody is interested in Real Estate in any city, and they can't find those Listings on Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, Redfin, Movoto or Homes. com - they will simply keep searching until they find a website with those listings.

I find it amazing Realtor Boards who supposedly represent the best interests of a membership who negotiate deals for a living cannot negotiate a better deal for their membership than letting these national websites profiteer from our listings.

Subscribing to IDX Feeds

Compounding this we have the issue of IDX feeds. Many Realtors have websites, and our Board has made a conscious effort to get Agents to subscribe to their IDX feed.

This is a great feature, allowing visitors to an Agent's website to plug into the local MLS and browse for properties.

Still, subscribing to your Board's feed costs money, from $40 to $60 per month to an IDX service, plus an additional amount to your Board. The Fort Lauderdale Board is actually quite reasonable: I paid an initial set-up fee of $150, then $3.00 per month. I presume they have a licensing agreement under which they also receive a percentage of the $40 I pay IDX Broker every month, but I do not have a problem with this, for it is a reasonable price for a good product. As Don Barzini said: "After all, we're not communists." The Miami Board, I know, charges something like $350 per year to agents who wish to subscribe to their IDX feed.

Again, however, thinking this through - if national real estate websites refused to pay a fair price for access to listings in Fort Lauderdale - where would potential Buyers go? They would jump on a Search Engine, find a website with the listings they wanted. That could be my site, or the website of another member of the Fort Lauderdale Board subscribing to their IDX feed.

So, in effect, our Boards collect our dues and allow Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com to sell leads generated by your listings to another agent instead of possibly directing those potential buyers to individuals among their membership who are paying them (a second time) to subscribe to their IDX feed.

You can call that capitalism. You can call it business. You can call it free enterprise. What you cannot call it is your Realtor Board living up to their responsibility to represent the best interests of their membership.

Now I'm sure the technology involved in effecting this change could be challenging. But we all know it is not impossible. A big chunk of our dues pays for our technology. It is only fitting money we pay for our technology should buy technology which supports our best interest. We are simply adapting to current market conditions. As technology evolved our Boards adapted that technology to suit the needs of their membership. In doing so, however, they created an opening for sites like Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com. These national real estate sites were smart to exploit this opening, make millions of dollars.

Now it is time for Real Estate Agents, through local Boards and the "National Association of Realtors" to adjust, insist upon our fair share, re-configure whatever programming it takes to do so.

No, It Really IS That Simple

As I said before, our dues pay large executive salaries. We all know these highly paid executives would like to sail along, collect their sizable paychecks, do as little as possible. That is simply the nature of corporate bureaucrats. But it is tough to imagine in all the boards in all the country we can't find one with the gumption to finally stand up and insist upon what is right for their membership.

(i.e. - their JOB.)

Realtors are fractious by nature. We spend too much time competing with each other to be anything less than contentious. But this is in our own best interest. I cannot believe we cannot agree on this point. But we must, for you know our Boards will do nothing until we start to speak out.

At the very least this matter should be put to a vote of the Agents in your Association.