As a consumer, you probably won’t bother keeping up with Real Estate news or acquisitions by big real estate advertising companies, but this, coupled with the pending Zillow and Trulia merger, will hit the consumer no matter what. way you cut it News Corp, a company that owns major media outlets around the world including Dow Jones & Company as well as Fox Entertainment Group, is buying Move Inc., the company that runs realtor.com. This acquisition will revitalize the way consumers search for homes online.
Recently, third-party websites like Zillow and Trulia have become the punching bags of regional, national, and local real estate brokers. Brokers have been pulling their listings left and right from these third-party websites, citing inaccuracies in listing data and syndication techniques as reasons for ending the relationship. Zillow, being the #1 real estate website (by traffic), remains king supreme, and Zillow’s acquisition of Trulia means the companies will continue to be powerhouses in the market, pooling resources while maintaining separate web entities for give consumers more choice when looking for their next home.
You may be wondering, “why are all the realtors turning away from Zillow and Trulia?” The answer is that they are tired of inaccurate listing data and paying to get leads from their own listings. Unfortunately, since the birth of these real estate search powerhouses, consumers have flocked to websites to take advantage of the ability to search for homes on the market across the country in one place. The problem for the consumer is that once on the website, they really don’t know if they are seeing accurate data, which causes huge problems for both clients and brokers. Suppose he is looking on Zillow and finds a house that he falls in love with. The pictures are pristine, the floor plan looks great, and the neighborhood is in the best school district in the area. Look to the right, choose an agent, and click to contact them. They call him back after getting the information from him, only to tell him that the house he fell in love with, for a price that seemed almost too good to be true, was sold 6 months ago and isn’t on the market. This is a big problem, as it not only causes delays in the home buying process for the consumer, but also takes time away from the agent concentrating on selling the homes.
Hopefully, the acquisition of Move Inc from New Corp will reinvigorate the trusted resource for searching for homes on a third-party website. The way realtor.com syndicates is directly from the MLS, which means that the data seen by agents in the area is available on Realtor.com for consumers to search freely.
There is still no comparison of third-party websites to a broker’s personal website, as iDX-supported broker websites are direct sources from MLS, with the most up-to-date local rosters. You can always trust a broker’s website.