Austin Brokers Turning off the Listings Spicket
- AGBeat – Eight Austin real estate firms terminate listing syndication (PS: if you read AG, you should really join the AGBeat community page)
- Inman – 8 more Austin real estate brokerages turn off flow of listings to portals
So, more brokers are shutting off the listings faucet to the portals. (If you don’t know the history of the listing syndication debate, go read through all these articles).
Let’s be clear. We’re talking about 8 brokerages. In one market.
Once someone in a major market rallies enough local support to get 50%+ of agents/brokers to stop sending listings, then Zillow and Trulia will have something to worry about.
But we’re a far cry from that happening. Agents and brokers have to answer to sellers, and last time I checked they want their houses sold.
Until agents and brokers can PROVE that posting a listing to the portals will DECREASE the likelihood of selling a home and/or DECREASE the sale price, then I’m not sure why this is even an discussion.
Whether you like it or not, Zillow and Trulia have won the consumer over. 60 million of them in Zillow’s case. Good luck winning them back to your side.
Note: If Eric Bramlett, a contributor here since the beginning and one of the brokers in Austin who has decided against automatically syndicating, wants to detail his thought process with a blog post, I certainly welcome his opinion here.
Jeff Manson
Posted at 12:04h, 31 OctoberI use to list and sell 75 – 85 listings a year and never did open houses or advertised the properties in the newspaper or those fancy magazines. I just told the truth to the sellers: need to price it right put it in the MLS and promote to the real estate community… Pretty simple… BTW: that is a little more than the average agent that was holding open houses and advertising selling 4 – 6 a year 😉