Two Florida multiple listing services have agreed to send top real estate portal Zillow a direct feed of their combined 67,000-plus listings.
The deals come as Zillow is scrambling to obtain listings directly from brokers and MLSs before the expiration of its agreement with Move-owned listing syndicator ListHub on April 7. Zillow rival realtor.com, also operated by Move, already obtains listings directly from virtually all of the nation’s MLSs through its agreement with the National Association of Realtors.
Announced today, the Jacksonville-based Northeast Florida Multiple Listing Service, also known as RealtyWEB.Net, has joined Zillow’s direct feed program, the Zillow Partnership Platform, to send its more than 15,000 residential listings (more than 1,600 of them rentals) directly to Zillow on behalf of its 6,000 members.
“Zillow is providing a service to a significant portion of our members,” said Ron Stephan, CEO of NEFMLS, in a statement.
“A direct relationship will improve the quality of our listings data and ensure the timeliness that is crucial to real estate, especially in terms of price and status updates.”
Further south along Florida’s Atlantic coast, the Jupiter-Tequesta-Hobe Sound Association of Realtors has also agreed to send Zillow a direct feed of its more than 52,000 active residential listings, including 24,000 single-family homes, 24,000 condominiums and 4,000 townhomes.
The state’s largest MLS, My Florida Regional MLS, agreed to provide Zillow a direct feed in December.
Listing agents whose MLSs participate in the Zillow Partnership Platform are prominently displayed on all of their listings, and listing brokers receive attribution, branding, a link back directly to their websites and access to daily analytics reports, the company said. Listings are updated on Zillow as often as every 15 minutes.
In addition, NEFMLS will receive a direct link to its MLS website in the rare cases that a broker does not have a website; full analytics reports for its listings; and credit and branding to the MLS, Stephan said.
“This region of Florida is incredibly attractive to buyers — which is great for sellers,” said Curt Beardsley, Zillow vice president of industry development, in a statement.
“Now that JTHS is sending listings directly to Zillow, sellers will be assured their listings are being seen by the many shoppers looking for their new home.”
A large share of JTHS’ brokers previously syndicated to Zillow via ListHub, and that drove the decision to syndicate directly from the MLS, JTHS MLS CEO Wes Wiggins and NEFMLS’s Stephan told Inman.
JTHS and NEFMLS expect to continue their current agreements with ListHub for listing syndication to other third-party portals, Wiggins and Stephan said.
Both MLSs will also deploy the recently launched Zillow Data Dashboard, a free listing management and reporting platform that the company says puts more control over listings in the hands of MLS members and brokers.
The dashboard allows brokers to opt in or out of sending their listings to Zillow with one click; keep customized MLS fields; set lead routing rules; include links to individual listing pages on their website; and get free daily reports of listing performance metrics such as search result impressions, total listing views and total leads delivered.
Zillow has declined to disclose the number of MLSs that are part of the Zillow Partnership Platform, putting the figure at “dozens.” Last month, the nation’s second most popular real estate listing portal, Trulia, announced it had signed direct feed agreements with 125 MLSs, though Trulia’s agreement with ListHub does not expire until June 2016.
Zillow is set to acquire Trulia any day now, and when it does Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff has said the company plans to combine the portals’ listings into one database. Rascoff said Zillow’s MLS contracts typically allow it to share listings with sites it owns, which will include Trulia.
Trulia exec Alon Chaver said Trulia would abide by its contractual obligations with MLSs after the merger, but declined to say whether those agreements would or would not allow the listings Trulia obtains from MLSs to appear on Zillow.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with comments from NEFMLS’s Ron Stephan and Trulia’s Alon Chaver.
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