NAR: Stop helping Zillow and hurting Realtors!
Realtors, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Are you getting multiple years of sold listings in your IDX feed?
I believe the answer to that question is no, because I have never found an IDX feed that had multiple years of sales history included.
NAR’s IDX and VOW rules make it difficult for 99% of the Realtor’s websites out there to show sold listings.
This is a huge advantage for Zillow. They show sales history going back over 25 years, and consumers love to view the sales history on a property. So because of NAR’s restrictive rules, they give Zillow a huge advantage over Realtor’s websites.
I would like to see NAR change their rules and start providing sold listings in IDX feeds, and not have any restrictive forced registration rules to see sold listings on an agent’s website.
In addition, it should not cost Realtors more money to download sold listings. At one MLS, I found they charged $500 per month to download multiple years of sold listings. This is 9 times more expensive than their IDX download. These high fees discourage agents from downloading this info.
These rules hurt Realtors and consumers, and help Zillow. If NAR would change their rules, consumers would have a much broader choice of websites to see sold listings. They would not be forced to visit Zillow to get this valuable data.
I started a petition on change.org asking NAR to stop hiding this critical data.
The petition is written from a consumer’s perspective, and it is titled “Stop hiding listings that consumers need to make good decisions for the largest financial transaction in their life.”
Linking to this petition from my website has gained 20 signatures in the first 2 days, which tells me consumers don’t like what NAR is doing.
Realtors, please let your clients know about this petition by sharing it on Social Media and your website.
Your clients will appreciate that you are doing your part to help remove these restrictive rules that hurt consumers.
Also, when NAR removes these restrictions, Realtors will now have the huge advantage of showing sales history, giving them an advantage over Zillow, who normally gets sales history from Tax Records and not directly from the MLS.
NAR: Stop helping Zillow and hurting Realtors!
Drew Meyers
Posted at 17:26h, 15 Septemberit’s not NAR… its individual MLS’ that need to change, correct?
Bryn Kaufman
Posted at 17:37h, 15 SeptemberNAR sets the IDX and VOW rules that the MLS follows.
TNRealtor
Posted at 18:34h, 15 SeptemberI have worked with 3 MLS – one fed sold data and two didn’t so it is possible for an MLS to provide that data within the current NAR guidelines.
Bryn Kaufman
Posted at 18:47h, 15 SeptemberGood to know, but I still think to change the rules at all the MLS’s nationwide it would be best for NAR to come out with a change in their recommended rules.
Targeting each MLS individually and hoping they will go against NAR’s recommendations would be difficult.
The MLS that released the sold data was it in the IDX feed for multiple years back and was the price the same as getting just Active listings?
When you worked at the MLS’s did you gain any insight on why they hold back this data?
Malcolm Lewis
Posted at 06:15h, 16 SeptemberAgree. Knowing what an agent has sold (and where and for how much etc.) is crucial info for consumers when choosing an agent. If the NAR is making that info hard for agents to share then the NAR is making it harder for agents to win new clients.
Lee Jinks
Posted at 07:24h, 16 SeptemberTexas is a non-disclosure state. Zillow doesn’t have access to sold data here. Value is predicted by a knowledgable and experienced REALTOR with the sold data. At first I was concerned that NAR changing the rules might hurt the Texas REALTOR, but being a non-disclosure state, MLS’s would still not be able to provide sold data to public facing websites. I guess it would be okay.
Bryn Kaufman
Posted at 09:17h, 16 September“Texas is a non-disclosure state.”
Lee, what does the above mean? Did the MLS’s get together and decide we are not going to share or allow any of our sold data to be released to the public, or did the state pass some type of law about this?
This issue might be a lot worse then I initially thought it was, especially if other states are like Texas.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 09:20h, 16 SeptemberNon disclosure states: http://www.zillow.com/blog/chronicles-of-data-collection-ii-non-disclosure-states-3783/
Bryn Kaufman
Posted at 10:23h, 16 SeptemberThanks, I did find information online about it. I added this info to my petition.
I did not realize there are such anti-consumer laws still in place in some states.
Good to see that most states either removed this law or did not adopt it, but surprising to see some still hanging on to it.
I wonder if NAR lobbied for this law.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 10:24h, 16 SeptemberIt would not surprise me if they did. But I don’t know.
Bryn Kaufman
Posted at 12:21h, 11 NovemberThanks NAR for listening to me and others by releasing the sold data.
https://geekestateblog.com/nar-bod-votes-wide-range-issues/