There’s probably no doubt that you’ve heard about the whole debacle between the ListHub listing syndication service (owned by Move, Inc) and Zillow (who also owns Trulia). The situation has been quite fluid and has changed quickly over the past few weeks.

In a court hearing yesterday (March 12th), the current temporary restraining order against ListHub was lifted by a San Francisco Superior Court judge and an agreement was reached to continue providing a data feed to Trulia until April 7, which is the same day a syndication agreement between Zillow and ListHub officially ends as well.

In other words, Trulia, the second most popular consumer-facing real estate website, now has less than a month to come up with a different data source for more than a quarter of its listings.

This news may not matter for brokerages and agents who are members of MLSs that already have agreements in place and feed listings to the major consumer real estate portals, but for those who have solely relied on ListHub in the past for listing syndication, the time has come to find another solution.

So if you’re in the group of agent or brokerages that are looking for a new way to make sure your listings continue to appear on all major real estate portals (including Zillow and Trulia) and be viewed by thousands of potential buyers, below are a few options to consider:

1. Manual input – Trulia and Zillow both allow you to manually input your current listings, including all photos and information. This can obviously become a very tedious process for an agent or brokerage with a large amount of listings, and can become a full time job all by itself. This is not very scalable.
2. Third party products –  Here at SPS Property Marketing, we provide individual agents and entire brokerages alike with solutions for marketing their listings, including syndication to all major real estate portals. While the AUTOMATED syndication piece is of course a big deal, we also provide all sorts of additional features and benefits for a nominal monthly or per-listing fee.
3. Contact your MLS – Many MLSs already pushes out data to all of these real estate websites, which is of course great for agents in those MLSs. But if your MLS currently does not have an agreement in place with Zillow / Trulia, consider contacting them. If enough of the agents and brokers in your area do the same thing, the MLS will likely have to listen (eventually).

Will YOU or your brokerage be affected by this change? If so, what solutions do you have in place to make sure your listings continue to be viewed by the masses of homebuyers out there?

The post Trulia will lose all ListHub data on April 7th, 2015 appeared first on Real Estate Marketing and Property Marketing Blog by Single Property Sites.

In case you haven’t kept up to date on the fast-paced developments, here is a brief recap of what has happened up until now:

ListHub recently announced that it would end its syndication agreements with Trulia and Zillow beginning February 26th. This news came on the heels of Zillow finally closing the deal on their acquisition of Trulia this past week after a six-month investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Basically this meant that if you use ListHub to send your listings to Trulia, they would no longer appear on Trulia after February 26. Additionally, April 8 was to mark the beginning of the same thing for those agents who use ListHub to send their listing to Zillow as well. The developments came fast and furious, and late last week Zillow announced that it has filed for a temporary restraining order on ListHub to keep listing going to Trulia.

Then the news broke yesterday that Judge Ernest Goldsmith of the San Francisco Superior Court granted Zillow’s restraining order and set a court date of March 12, meaning ListHub must continue to send listings to Trulia until at least that date.

According to Trulia’s president Paul Levine, “The court’s order is a win for brokers, agents and the home sellers they represent. Since News Corp announced its decision on Friday to prematurely cut off the listing feed to Trulia, we’ve received an influx of calls from MLSs and brokers who were concerned that they and their clients wouldn’t be able to effectively market their listings ahead of the home shopping season”.

What does it all really mean? 

Well that depends on who you ask. On one hand, some agents now see ListHub’s parent, Move Inc. (a News Corp. subsidiary), as the playground bully. On the other hand, there are quite a few folks who applaud Move’s decision to end its agreements.

There are a few important questions that come to mind from this whole situation:

1) What is Zillow’s real “beef”?
Zillow claims it’s not necessarily about whether listings themselves continue to flow to Trulia, and says it is instead over the short notice that Move gave Trulia before pulling its listings.

2) Why wasn’t Zillow prepared?
Move Inc and ListHub brought up a very valid question – why wasn’t Zillow prepared for this type of a situation? Doesn’t Zillow have the ability to simply push all of its listing data to Trulia to replace the ListHub data?

3) What will happen from here?
Well, there’s really no telling what will happen… Perhaps Zillow will come out victorious and things will remain the same. Or perhaps brokers and agents need to start thinking about what they are going to do in case ListHub data no longer gets pushed out to T & Z!

Check back for more updates as they develop!

The post UPDATE: Court rules in Zillow’s favor in first round of ListHub fiasco appeared first on Real Estate Marketing and Property Marketing Blog by Single Property Sites.