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Putting a Face on Real Estate since 1995™
• WC REALTORS Bowling for TREPAC • Pure Gold Realty's Launch Party • Independence Title Headquarters Grand Opening • WCR Monthly Meeting • and much, much more!
Associates in Progress
Become Wealthy Without Risk! page 11
page 25
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APRIL 2014 • VOLUME 18 • ISSUE 12
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darby
A Professional Limited Liability Company
Ready or not, ABoR severs ties with ListHub as of April 30 By Riki Markowitz
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s April 30 quickly approaches, the Austin real estate community sits in anticipation of what the anything-but-ordinary day will bring. On that Wednesday, the Austin Board of REALTORS’ (ABoR) decision to terminate its contract with ListHub will go into effect. ABoR and ListHub, a listing asset management system and parent site for several popular third party real estate syndicators,
like Zillow, Trulia and Homes.com, started a business relationship in 2007. Since then, the tech company has been through a variety of acquisitions and leadership changes. The deal provides ListHub with a property-listing feed from the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), which is then posted on to its portfolio of syndication sites. In turn, ListHub sells leads back to agents. After a 2012 study by the WAV Group demonstrated that a good percentage of data posted by syndicate websites was inaccurate, ABoR created a task force to evaluate the partnership. One year later, Oct. 9, 2013, the Board announced its decision to stop syndicating listings to non-REALTOR consumer websites. Shortly thereafter, eight real estate agencies in the city followed suit. Even though the decision to pull the plug on non-REALTOR syndicators was announced about six months ago, strong opinions continue to fuel emotions and generate clicks online. Interestingly, the entire country has its eye on April 30. Real estate professionals everywhere are aware of ABoR and ListHub’s contractual demise. It has been written about in large publications like Philadelphia Weekly, and small venues, like Todd Miller TV, a video blog hosted by a Nevada-based real estate consultant. One reason why Austin is so divided on this issue is because a lot of agents and brokers don’t understand ABoR’s decision. “Several conversations [are] taking place under the umbrella of the word syndication. [It] has muddied up the conversation,” says Jack Stapleton, Williamson County Association of REALTORS’ president-elect. Stapleton explains that the primary reason for terminating the relationship with ListHub was due to the integrity of listing data. By publishing inaccurate information, syndicators were compromising the National Association of REAL-
TORS (NAR) Codes of Ethics and Standards of Practice, which hold brokers and agents liable for the dissemination of bad listings. Among other inaccurate data, the WAV Group, a national real estate consultancy, found that up to 37 percent of listings that appear on syndication websites were no longer for sale and that 20 percent of homes listed on the MLS, the portal agents use as a syndicator go-between, are never posted. The biggest syndication “offenders” are Zillow and Trulia. Incidentally, a Google search for “Austin Real Estate” shows that these sites appear on the first page, often in the top three to five positions – arguably the most valuable spots on the page. This point is not lost on Todd Miller, the owner of Nevada Reality Solutions. On his Oct. 10, 2013 broadcast, Miller said that Zillow and Trulia’s Google rankings could be used as leverage by Austin brokers. “I think [terminating the ListHub contract] is a shortsighted idea,” said Miller in his video blog. “If I were an agent in that market, I would bring this article with me and say, ‘Look, you can list with them, but your house is not going to show up on Zillow and Trulia. If you list with me, it will.’ Miller was referring to the Oct. 10th press release indicating that eight Austin brokerages would also stop listing properties on third party syndication websites. (ABoR fully supports agents’ advertising their listings on any website they choose, including ListHub sites.) Rob Hahn, a managing partner at 7DS, a real estate marketing and technology firm in Houston, is another professional who sees ABoR’s move as imprudent. But, unlike Miller, rather than using ABoR’s decision as a way to divide the real estate community, Hahn takes to his popular website, The Notorious
Front Page: Continued on page 28
Upcoming Events Wednesday, April 23 AYREP Happy Hour Moontower Saloon - 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 24 Santa Rita Ranch S REALTOR Preview Luncheon 101 Norcia Loop -11 a.m. to 2 p.m. HBA Parade of Homes VIP Preview Party Willie Nelson's Tierra Vista - 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday April 26 HBA Parade of Homes Opens Willie Nelson's Tierra Vista 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday April 26-27 Santa Rita Ranch S Grand Opening 101 Norcia Loop - 12 to 5 p.m. Thursday, May 1 HBA Parade of Homes REALTOR Day Willie Nelson's Tierra Vista 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Hay Darby 5th Annual Open House 402 West 7th Street - 4 to 7 p.m. Thursday, May 8 ABoR TREPAC Golf Party Top Golf Austin - 4:30 to 7 p.m. Monday, May 19 WC 25th Annual Golf Classic Cimarron Hills Golf Club - 11:30 a.m. More at www.myRealtyLine.com