Zillow Group nixes manual listing entry for real estate agents, doubles down on direct listing feeds
“Zillow advised agents to check if their MLS provides a listing feed to Zillow Group on its “MLS Checker site.”
“If a feed is available, a Zillow Group team member will be able to answer any questions and help you keep your listings on Zillow and Trulia,” the email said.
But if agents discover their MLS does not provide a direct feed to Zillow Group, the company suggested they ask their brokerage or MLS to start.
“If an MLS feed is not currently available in your market, ask your broker about setting up a free feed with Zillow Group,” the email said. “You can also reach out to your local MLS and request that they establish a feed. Please visit the Zillow Help Center for our list of MLS contact information.”
I don’t like it. Their “MLS Checker” (maybe “hit list” would be more appropriate) site links to the “contact me” page of the MLS/Association. To me the whole process is set up to make the MLS look like the bad guy. Just poor form in my opinion.
At least they are stoping short of having the agent send a “robo-email” like RPR did.
For a number of years we’ve received complaints about “inaccurate listings” on Zillow. In almost every case, the complaints centered on manually entered listings where an agent had entered a listing on Zillow but forgot to update it when there was a price change or remove it when the property sold. We also found, at times, that there were issues with fraud where an agent would upload a fake listing or post another agent’s listing.
The industry has trended towards sending listings directly. Now, more than 550 MLS can send us listings and we have more than 25,000 broker partnerships. As a result, we can now eliminate manually posted listings as listing feeds provide a much better experience for agents, brokers and millions of home shoppers who come to our sites and apps. This change in policy actually shows that we are doubling down on our strategy of relying upon the MLS as the “gold standard” for listing accuracy. We announced our May 1st transition date yesterday to give agents and brokers enough time to put an MLS or Broker feed in place, if they didn’t already have one.
I would also note that other listing sites do not accept manually posted listings so our stance is not unusual. In contrast with some other sites, however, Zillow Group ensures that brokers can easily choose whether their listings appear on our sites via a dashboard. We don’t believe in forced syndication and put the decision in the brokers’ hands.
Finally, some agents have asked us whether this policy change means they can no longer enhance their listings on Zillow Group (for example, upload higher resolution photos than their MLS supports or enter a listing description longer than their MLS permits). The answer is that agents can still enhance their listings, for free, on Zillow and Trulia.