Listing Syndication has become one of the more polarizing business topics in the real estate industry. Everyone seems to have a view, and many groups are trying to figure out how to fix it. There is no doubt that some companies are benefiting from syndication, but most find only little or moderate success. We seem to be hitting an inflection point with syndication where a lot of change is about to happen – slowly I suspect – like all real estate trends.
The Council of MLS published two surveys this week – one for consumers and another for professionals. They are trying to understand if a prominently displayed MLS logo of some form will be beneficial to provide some assurances on listing quality. WAV Group is providing the survey service to CMLS complimentary. If you want to promote the survey on your public site (consumer) or send it to your agents and brokers (professional), contact Marilyn Wilson from the WAV Group(below) or Sarah Carton at CMLS for the link.
Brokers are not banding together, but they are making changes to their syndication strategy in some significant ways. Shorewest and Edina – two of the top 25 largest brokerages in America have turned off syndication. Today, two smaller brokers – The Goodlife Team in Austin, TX and ARG Realty in San Diego, CA released these videos about their own decision to pull their listings out of syndication.
Here is the ARG Video ARG YouTube Video
Here is The Goodlife Team Video The Goodlife Team Video
In contrast, one of America’s largest brokers – Hoby Hanna of Howard Hanna made a huge investment in syndication and went all in. Here is story with this YouTube Video. Hoby Hanna speaks about syndicaiton
Hey Victor, Jay T. from Zillow here. While I certainly can’t speak directly for the GoodLife Team, Jack Miller, their CTO, was pretty clear in a second video they posted yesterday (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K5aNS6F24I) that their decision was advertising policy based and not syndication based. Note at 0:32, “I also want to make it clear that this is not about the whole syndication argument / bandwagon. We are not part of that debate.”
Glad you are feeling better Jay – and great point
Thanks Victor! Feeling great, and thankful for modern medicine. Hope to see you in D.C. in a couple of weeks!
I will be there amigo.