Edina Realty has hit their tipping point with third party aggregators and are going to pull their listings from Trulia.com beginning Nov. 30. They also intend to follow suit soon after with Realtor.com. “They get listings for free from brokers around the country and then display them online, collecting and distributing leads for a profit.” Here’s the reality – accurate and real-time real estate information is only found on the MLS (Multiple Listing Service), which is only accessible by Realtors and on many Realtor websites (we have to pay a high monthly fee to provide this to our clients.) Period, end of story. Any other source that claims to be the MLS is inaccurate at best and fraudulent at worst. Trulia and Zillow were very slick years ago by enticing Realtors to manually enter their own listings into each of the websites. Their “pitch” was that this would give your sellers the additional exposure they needed to sell their homes quickly. As these two companies grew, their true intent was revealed but it was too late to stop them. In reality, they are selling our listings back to us through advertising packages. The undersigned agents would like to ask their brokers to do the right thing and join Edina Realty's decision by removing their listings from Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com

Links