Great and detailed post by Andrea Brambila of Inman News.

Redfin wants to change listing displays across the industry

Redfin’s proposal would require every website that gets listings from one of the hundreds of multiple listing services (MLSs) owned by Realtor associations to feature the broker or agent representing each listing more prominently and provide a link back to their brokerage website that search engines can easily understand ….

It would impact big home search sites including Zillow and realtor.com (which do link back to listing broker sites when links are provided, but often not in a format Redfin says is easily indexed by Google) and even Redfin.com (which itself currently does not link back to the rival brokerages representing listings that appear on its website).

There is so much here to unpack here. What seems like a pretty straight forward proposal on listing attribution is really rife with consequences on many levels. I think Glenn is a bit hyperbolic with many of his statements but do understand Redfin’s frustration.

What I also think should be considered is how listing attribution will be handled with new emerging technologies such as voice search, AR and VR. Yes, these technologies may seem far in the future but any changes to data policy should consider these as well. Andy Woolley moderated a panel at a recent CMLS conference on this very issue.

That being said the issues are complicated. Which leads me to this excerpt in the Inman post.

But that has not stopped Kelman from trying. For the past two years, he’s personally pushed his proposal at NAR’s midyear conference. “If it doesn’t take this time around, I’ll give the same talk next year naked, as a form of protest art,” Kelman quipped after his speech this year.

Glenn might need to get some manscaping done before next May.