An open letter to Sandicor CEO Ray Ewing, and the Board of Directors:
On April 3, 2015, a message left on the Sandicor website said that the negotiations between you and Zillow had broken down, and that you’d update us as you work further on an agreement to automatically upload our listings.
It’s been NINE months – how’s that coming?
According to folks at Zillow, there has been no movement.
Nine months have gone by, and you can’t find a way to agree with Zillow? They have 400 other MLS companies that have an agreement to upload listings to Zillow – what is the problem?
In mellow, laid-back San Diego, you probably aren’t getting enough complaints to move the needle. I’m only one guy, but I think many agents can relate to these concerns:
- Without an automatic upload from the MLS, we are dependent upon third-party aggregators to do the work – or upload manually ourselves. You used to allow our MLS listings to be automatically uploaded, and it is the preferred option for efficiency and accuracy. Let’s make a deal here!
- There are agents who don’t know that the auto-upload has been disrupted, and their listings aren’t on Zillow. Those agents and the consumers deserve to have those listings advertised on the most popular real estate website.
- Zillow has security alerts for fraudulent listings. They will allow listings that aren’t automatically uploaded, but if there is any discrepancy once they have sold, then Zillow deletes them. Recently I had a listing disappear from Zillow – and my Past Sales – because a previous listing agent had spelled the street name wrong. But because mine was the most recent, my listing was deleted. While I know it sounds like a Zillow issue, if you just got busy on making an agreement with them, then there wouldn’t be a problem.
The MLS asks every agent during a listing input whether we want it uploaded to the portals – thank you, we deserve to have that choice. But Zillow isn’t part of the group that gets the listing data!
We pay you to help us, so we can help our clients.
Will you please make the deal with Zillow to upload our listings automatically please? The listings belong to us – let each agent decide if they get uploaded automatically, not you.
It’s great how blog content can cause some discussion.
The guy in charge of the Sandicor committee who is dealing with the Zillow negotiations called me.
One of the main issues that is bandied about in every Zillow conversation is accuracy. But isn’t that a great reason why we would want to auto-upload our listings – to ensure accuracy? If the portal data is taken directly from what the listing agent has inputted into the MLS, then hey, we determine our own accuracy!
Do we need to go back and correct every error in Zillow to be satisfied? No – and you could say the same thing about the MLS accuracy, which is good but not 100%. All that matters is the last 6-12 months, which if we started today would be here before we know it.
He said the other big concern is liability. Zillow wants to take our data and use it as they see fit, but not be responsible for it.
1. If the data is being auto-loaded directly from the MLS, then we have done our part – and we have a copy. It’s hard to imagine how any potential tweak by them would cause us to get sued.
Have you ever heard of a broker being sued for data published on a real estate portal? Me neither. If you ever come across a lawsuit like that, let me know.
2. The horse has left the barn. Individual brokerages are now cutting their own auto-uploading deals with Zillow, and the rest of us are manually uploading our listings. We live with the threat of liability – we want the exposure Zillow gives our listings!
The powers-that-be at Sandicor are waiting for Zillow to agree to our terms. But Zillow is the tail wagging the dog. Sandicor can play patty-cake in the sandbox all they want, but in the meantime, nothing is getting done.
It already makes sense to disband Sandicor, and have SD realtors join the CRMLS. They serve 80,000 agents throughout California, have a far-better MLS website and public-facing portal, and made their auto-upload deal with Zillow a year ago.
Jim, you were not on the committee dealing with Zillow’s demands. The demand were highly unreasonable. Sandicor is leading the way nationwide on holding its ground against giving away data to Zillow, and no agents have gone out of business because listings are not flowing automatically to Zillow. It’s not a big deal nor is it the end of the world. It’s a relief.
You’d be surprised how many people I have talked to, highly successful agents and brokers, who love that we aren’t tied to Zillow. Your comments are very uninformed and to me your opinions are in the tiny minority. Brush up on how Sandicor works and why it’s here.