Blog Posts – Agent Reputation

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

My prior post spoke of the fact the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors had chosen to cut off their MLS feeds to Zillow and Listhub. This evidently caused quite the backlash from agents, teams and smaller brokerages in the Las Vegas/Henderson real estate market.

A press release(Below) from GLVAR stated after hearing concerns this month from many of its members, they have reconsidered and will now continue to share the MLS data to Zillow and Listhub as they explore other options.

Local agents and brokers communicated to the MLS that removing Zillow and Listhub from the feeds could create a hardship and would detract from the way they did business. I know all of my Las Vegas clients were really upset there was a potential that their listings would not show up on Zillow. Many of them get asked on their listing appointments if their listings would be on Zillow, Realtor and many of the home search networks out there.

No matter what side of the fence you are on about MLS data feeds and Zillow, you have to give GLVAR credit for listening to it members and having the guts to change their mind. Who knows what the future holds in this ever evolving real estate industry.

Press release dated November 15th 2018

GLVAR is going to end automatic syndication with Zillow and Listhub in January

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.

Twitter – Facebook – ActiveRain

Agent Reputation is starting a new season with a new marketing platform

Last night we launched our new online marketing platform for the real estate industry which you can access from our homepage.

First and foremost, I have to thank Jim Marks, the former owner of Virtual Results, for hiring me as his marketing director in 2011. Though I had quite a bit of marketing experience under my belt, this was the start of my journey into the real estate industry. I became a “road scholar” traveling with Jim on all of his speaking engagements at Xplode, PNC Mortgage and Inman Events including the original Agent Reboot.

I was fortunate to learn from Jim and also from many of the real estate marketing influencers you all know today. So I have to give a shout out to: Jay Thompson, Chris Smith, Matt Fagioli, Tom Ferry, Joe Sesso, Bob Stewart, Steve Pacinelli, Anu Kumar, Bodilyn Jolly, Molly McKinley, Dale Chumbley and Eric Stegiman.

In 2014, Sean McCrory, the founder of Agent Reputation, saw the need to help real estate agents, teams and brokerages in obtaining and publishing positive reviews. Our Reputation Marketing system has been very successful with a 90+% retention rate over the past five years. Just over three years ago, clients asked us to find them a web design option. We found nothing that would meet their needs as we would recommend, so we opened our own shop.

We started out quietly. Not ringing our own bell too much with our sites. Never self promoting in the various social media groups. We wanted to analyze statistics, consumer experience and conversion. As we developed we were getting referrals from some of the top coaching and marketing businesses in the industry. Our referral business was so large, we never had to spend a dime on advertising.

As we evolved through technologies we developed, marketing and technology companies approached us to integrate their products into our websites. So a huge shout out to IDX Broker, eMerge, IMAX CRM and Displet.

We build semi-custom real estate websites our clients own outright. All of our sites include an IDX, Reputation Marketing, a CRM, an email marketing system and content marketing. We are offering an online marketing solution second to none in the real estate industry.

Please spend a few moments checking out our website.