Would you use a real estate site that only has 60% of the listings?

That's what might just be happening with Trulia and, eventually Zillow.  For those of us in the industry, we've been watching a very interesting battle ensue among the giants of online listing information.  This is going to get a little boring for a minute but the background is important.

The three largest players of online listing information continue to be Zillow.com, Trulia.com and REALTOR.com.  REALTOR.com is the only site which gains its listing information directly from every REALTOR MLS in the nation making it extremely timely and accurate.  Zillow, Trulia and dozens of other sites get their data from a national listing syndication service called Listhub.  Listhub contracts with over 500 MLS systems nationwide to collect their data and redistribute it in a more streamlined format to sites like Trulia, Zillow and others.  While the Listhub feed includes most of the MLS data in the country, there are still a large number of MLS providers that don't participate so sites like Zillow and Trulia utilize other sources of information that tend to be much less accurate.  This is a source of frustration for REALTORS and our seller clients because we know its essential that the information shown online is absolutely accurate.

Here's where it gets interesting.  In late 2014 News Corp purchased Move Inc. who owns REALTOR.com and more importantly Listhub, the syndication service who feeds Zillow, Trulia and other sites.  Move Inc announced that it is no longer going to provide the Listhub feed to Trulia or Zillow as of April 7th, 2015.  According to some industry professionals this will eliminate as much as 40% of the listing information that Zillow and Trulia currently have access to.  Would you use a real estate website that has only 60% of the available properties?  I think not.

Zillow is trying to develop direct relationships with individual MLSs and large brokerages to get the data they need but many are likely not going to play along due to the inaccuracies of the site.  It will be an interesting scenario to watch and one that will really affect our industry.

One thing that won't change is the fact that www.homewaters.net pulls our data directly from 5 different MLS systems in northern Michigan.  This makes our site incredibly accurate for those searching our service areas.  Our lifestyle focused searches also make the process of finding ALL the available listings that would be a fit for you and your family a breeze.  If you've been using Trulia or Zillow, it may be time to find another home and we'd love to help in your search.