Interesting article published today in the New York Sun about StreetEasy, a site for buyers looking to move into Manhattan apartments.  The site scrapes apartment listings from around the Web and consolidates them into a single site, a move that initially ticked brokers off.  Sound familiar?  From the article:

Although the site was instantly popular, it met with opposition from many sectors of the real estate industry, in part because it represents a sea change in how Manhattan real estate works, the founder of the real estate networking site MyDealBook.com, Ryan Slack, said.

In the past, apartment-seekers depended entirely on brokers for information about the market. “Brokers have historically been information brokers,” he said. “Now, all that’s all available online.”

As a result, many brokers feared that Web sites would make them redundant. “Some brokers are afraid of StreetEasy,” Mr. Huang said. “If you’re a buyer, you can find listings without having to use a broker.”

This sounds like the same resistance sites like Trulia and Zillow met with upon their launch.  But just as brokers and agents grew to see those sites as a tool to drive traffic to their listings, so too are many apartment brokers in New York.

But as StreetEasy has become more popular with readers, many brokers have come around, recognizing that it helps drive traffic to their sites, Mr. Smith said. Most of the listings on StreetEasy now are provided directly to the site by industry feeds and by brokers themselves, he said, though some are still scraped.

Interestingly, New York’s two largest real estate firms, Prudential Douglas Elliman and the Corcoran Group, are still withholding their listings.

Full article from the New York Sun.

Thoughts?