First Team Real Estate has replaced Yorba Linda, Calif.-based Prudential California Realty as the exclusive Southern California member of RealtyTrac’s broker network, which gives participating brokers access to data and leads from the foreclosure marketplace.
The Irvine, Calif.-based brokerage, which has over 1,800 agents in more than 40 offices in Southern California, will get exclusive buyer and seller leads from RealtyTrac.com and 30 types of neighborhood data from RealtyTrac’s subsidiary HomeFacts.
“We are excited to partner with RealtyTrac as their exclusive partner in Southern California,” said Cameron Merage, founder and CEO of First Team Real Estate, in a statement. “The result of this partnership will represent a quantifiable increase in the value we deliver to our agents and the homeowners they serve.”
RealtyTrac launched its brokerage network in February 2013. Member firms pay to license RealtyTrac’s data and to be the exclusive recipient of RealtyTrac leads in their market.
Four of the eight brokers in the network supply Internet Data Exchange feeds to RealtyTrac.com — a near-complete set of listings represented by all brokers participating in IDX in each market. First Team Real Estate is not among those member firms supplying an IDX feed.
“All RealtyTrac Network brokers are offered the opportunity to contract with RealtyTrac as a vendor to build an IDX-compliant site with the broker’s listing feed that in turn can be posted on RealtyTrac.com,” a RealtyTrac spokeswoman said in an email. “There is no requirement to do so, the brokers do so at their election. When brokers elect to do so, they control all aspects of the IDX site and they receive dominant broker branding on the site.”
The other four broker members, including First Team Real Estate, send their listings to RealtyTrac.com through the syndication platform ListHub, where RealtyTrac also gets listings from brokers across the country who are not in the network.
Other members of the network include Arvada, Colo.-based Re/Max Alliance; Chase International, which serves markets including Reno, Nev., and Lake Tahoe; Brentwood, Tenn.-based Bob Parks Realty; Oklahoma City-based Prudential Alliance Realty; Tulsa, Okla.-based Prudential Detrick Realty; Prudential Utah Real Estate; and HER Realtors.
Prudential California Realty, which serves Orange and Riverside counties, was a founding member of the network, but First Team Real Estate has replaced it as RealtyTrac’s exclusive Southern California member broker.
RealtyTrac plans to grow the network to cover every major market in the U.S. to deeply root its brand in local markets and to send partner brokerages leads and enhance their brands with RealtyTrac’s media presence, RealtyTrac Vice President Daren Blomquist told Inman News.
In areas where it doesn’t have brokerage partners, the firm has a U.S.-wide network 4,600 agents who receive RealtyTrac leads, Blomquist said.
After briefly surfacing info like drug lab and sex offender neighborhood stats next to listings on RealtyTrac.com in March, the firm recently pulled that and other info from appearing next to listings sourced from multiple listing services to comply with MLS rules.
RealtyTrac recently became the newest firm in the tax, deed and mortgage data licensing business through a CoreLogic settlement with the Federal Trade Commission that required CoreLogic to license that data to the firm.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties was the founding member of RealtyTrac’s broker network and the brokerage First Team Real Estate replaced in the network. In fact, Yorba Linda, Calif.-based Prudential California Realty was the founding broker member the story intended to reference.
