MLSs are joining agents and brokers in the rush to contribute listings to online listing sites like Trulia, Google Base and others.
There have been many spirited conversations regarding this trend and thought leadership is needed in this area.
On the surface, the opportunity side of the equation seems pretty simple – send the listings and these companies will share them with visitors to their website for free. Listings are marketed to consumers expanding the reach and exposure to the properties available.
Opportunity Costs – although most mls organizations can easily provision listing feeds, depending on the rules and regulations for public display of data, there may be considerable compliance issues that are hard to control.
Liability – we would caution MLSs to carefully read the data sharing agreements – usually the supplier of the data is accepting legal responsibility for the data and any claim that may arise out of that. MLSs need to insure that this liability is correctly placed on the broker and not the MLS.
Share your thoughts.
