In the case of IDX it is required, although it is not prominent. The purpose of IDX is to give all MLS members access to all listings that don’t opt out. Since the member is paying for the IDX service, which I assume you do on your site, they can make their own contact information more prominent. Any time I have an inquiry where they want to know who the listing agent is, I gladly give them the information. Some folks are set in dealing directly with the listing agent, and I’m not going to stand in the way, although I do normally mention the drawbacks. The normal perception is they will get a reduced commission by working with a listing agent, sometimes that is true, most of the time it is not. Yes, I hope to see you in San Diego someday, or maybe I will get out to OC, take care!

Jeffery, I so appreciate your comment. We need to get together again one of these days! I did see Mr. Glick’s video and will confess to some eye rolling. I’m not an advocate of dual agency, but really, this idea that my desire to be the point of contact for my listings as much as possible is simply a ploy for dual agency is tiresome. As I stated in my AG comments, “… let’s not say that a buyer’s agent that gets an inquiry is the same thing as the listing agent fielding these questions. It’s not. The level of communication about that individual listing is different…. to say that all of this syndication and IDX exposure serves the seller, is much more muddy that it appears on its surface. The motivation of the agent that gets that inquiry….are you my next buyer paycheck…or would this home fit your needs, is an entirely different mindset.” As for the policing of this stuff, your Google Alert idea is right on the money. Data standards, policing these sites, it’s all very complicated. I’m a small agent at my own boutique brokerage. These days, I still have more questions than answers.

I will connect with our listing support team to see where this investigation stands and drop you a line. Our customer support team is now a 7 day a week operation and we strive to be quite responsive, our team is available at listingsupport @ zillow.com to assist in issues small and large.

Thanks,

Greg Schwartz

Lots of people search “property address listing agent”. It takes some work to rank for these terms but it’s not that difficult in the end.

I think most of the objections and discussions had more to do with the manner and spin that Mr. Abbott presented in his video, than the actual opt out of syndication. I don’t have the numbers of agencies that have opted out of San Diego, but I’m sure that he is not the first or the last one. That is the privilege of every MLS broker.

If you want to see an analysis by a level headed broker I highly encourage you to visit You Tube and view the response from Fred Glick. He goes point by point over the video and really you can start to see the true motivation of ARG.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMQm3ZvVRl4&feature=youtu.be

Mr. Abbott has decided to spin his decision into making the Sellers think that less exposure is good so them. His major complaint seems to be that the consumer cannot identify the listing agent, which is ironic, since when I look up a competitors listing on his IDX feed he has 3 calls for action – again appearing that he is the listing agent.

No one in the industry likes the fact that the Zillow’s, Reator.com and Trulias are using MLS data to aggregate to get viewers. If our industry had done a better job years ago and offered such a on-line presence there would not be the need or financial benefit for 3rd party companies to come along. The truth of the matter is these sites cost a whole lot of money, a someone or something needs to pay for them. The incentive of Zillow , Trulia, and countless other 3rd party sites is to get traffic and sell enhanced services to listing agents and leads to buyer’s agents. That is in my mind a marketing cost not unlike advertising in a magazine, local paper, or billboard.

In the early days Zillow and Trulia relied on agent , broker or owner load. It was kind of the wild wild west, but since there were no syndication options, this was the only way for them to build a data-base. Both Zillow and Trulia continue to use a variety of data feeds which include MLS syndications, county data statistics, large broker feeds, and the worst, broker load. Broker load is where most of the problems come from since the agent forgets where he loaded the listing, or another agent claims the listing, like in your case. Realtor.com has mostly relied on MLS Broker agreements, which by the way, they normally don’t pay anything for, but that is another topic. Sadly, some 3rd party sites still allow for non-syndication load, partly not wanted to keep the small brokerage from participation, which cannot afford to develop the feeds. The best way to go about syndication is from the MLS level, which is what Sandicor had done.

I remember last year I had a home listed in Del Mar. As part of my service to my Sellers I would collect viewing data from Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com. Realtor.com was the only site that I enhanced as a strategic marketing choice.

One week when logging in I was surprised to find that listing was showing another agent at another agency. Like you I was pretty taken back and after searching Trulia, I found them to be the listing agent for hundreds of other Trulia listings. Going over to Sandicor and pulling the the listing information for the agent, I found only a few. I took this agent to Sandicor rules and regulations and the person was stopped from doing this.

I guess my point here is as listing agents you have to take the time to see what is out there about your listing. Every listing agent should have a Google Alert set up for the property address’s of their listings. This is free and very easy to set up. Of even bigger danger to your Sellers is some one representing that the listing is for rent on a free site like Craigs List. Pulling listing syndication wil not solve this problem. As professionals we have to take ownership and time to protect our sellers. Boards and MLS have rules and procedures for taking care of these problems, and if we would all get involved, the few bad apples would soon realize they cannot just hijack some other agents listing.

So if boycotting these sites would make them go away, and we could get the cat back in the bad I would be all for it. You would have to be an idiot to think this is going to happen, Zillow has already gone public and has huge cash reserves, and Trulia is only a matter of time. No industry is going to police or control the Internet, just ask the stockbrokers.

All that would happen is the 3rd party sites would have to go back to not using syndication, which would make things all the worse. I don’t know about your MLS, but in San Diego, Sandicor uses 3rd party syndication services that distribute only only information (data) that the MLS has determined to be public. Occupancy status, confidential remarks, offer of compensations, sellers names, are not allowed to be syndicated.

I have a great deal of respect and admiration for both Kris Berg and yourself. If every listing agent was as honest and ethical as yourself I would not be so hard on the “dual agency” discussion. However, since many listing agents don’t return phone calls, downplay material defects at the insistence of their seller client, and can be pretty lazy, I believe the consumer has the right to bring in their own advocate.

At the end of the day as a listing agent, your duty is to your Client to get the highest and best price for your Client. Where the consumer is best served is when they have an advocate on their side with duty to only them including getting them the best price.

I fully recognize that listing agents have to deal with lazy, incompetent buyer’s agents all the time. Just like listing agents, there are both good and bad apples – which sounds more like an industry problem to me than a consumer problem.

So I am all for making the data better and more accurate. That starts with the MLS enforcing rules and regulations, agents that complete the input with accurate data, report sales contingencies, pending, and closings in a timely basis. It then takes the individual agent to take ownership, rather than complaining about the problem, to police ourselves for a higher standard.

The consumer is not stupid and they will frequent sites with more reliable, up to date information. A couple of drives over to a listing that sold 4 months ago will see to that. Since Zillow, Trulia, Yahoo, Home Store, and the dozens of other third party sites are not going away, we need to take the fight to what would be effective.

Certainly, there are great opportunities when buying at a Trustee Sale, but most buyers today aren’t willing to buy sight unseen in those sales. Not only does it take a cash purchase in Orange County, but you are competing with seasoned professionals who frequenting those sales and are very savvy about the opportunities and risks there. And certainly there can be significant risks with property condition and title.

Have you had the opportunity to purchase at the trustee sale?