Important Changes to Streeteasy and Buyer Searches
As you may or may not know, Streeteasy has implemented several initiatives this year which have upset the brokerage community, including selling leads and charging for rental listings – this will lead to less complete Streeteasy buyer searches. In the wake of these developments, REBNY, the trade group representing the brokerage community, has begun bolstering its services by, as of August 1st, streamlining the syndication of listings from the REBNY Listing Service (the “RLS”), the de facto centralized listing database for the NYC market, to consumer-facing listing aggregation websites.
Streeteasy has long held the position that they will only accept direct feeds from brokerage companies (as opposed to listings syndicated from the RLS) to ensure the quality of their data. This week, in the most significant development yet, four of the City’s largest brokerage companies – Compass, Town, Stribling and Brown Harris Stevens – have stopped feeding their sales and rental listings to Streeteasy. Together, these firms represent about 20% of the City’s sales listings. This is on top of Corcoran and Citi Habitats stopping their rental feed to Streeteasy two weeks ago (in the wake of its new $3/listing/day charge). If they choose to, agents from these firms will still be able to directly upload their sales and rental listings to Streeteasy outside of their direct company feeds.
For all my buyer clients – what does this mean for you and your Streeteasy buyer searches?
-
Can you still rely upon Streeteasy?
- No. Streeteasy can no longer be relied upon as a comprehensive source of listings. Although individual agents will likely continue to post their listings directly to Streeteasy (since sales listings are free to post), that cannot be guaranteed. Accordingly, in order to ensure that you will be seeing the whole market, you may have to search these four companies’ websites directly – another step that will no doubt annoy everybody.
-
Are there other listings aggregation websites that receive a feed from the RLS?
- Yes.
-
Will other listings aggregation websites include listings from all the major brokerage firms?
- Maybe. Since brokerage firms can select which listing aggregator websites they will syndicate to, there is no guarantee that any one listing aggregator website will be universally selected, and thus become a comprehensive source of listings.
-
What will Digs do to help me?
- We will still have our searches set up for each of our clients to receive every new listing that is posted in connection with your search criteria.
- We are taking a wait-and-see approach to how this will shake out. If Streeteasy blinks and decides to take a direct feed from the RLS, problem solved. If not, we will implement direct RLS access from our website so you can search the entire market without having to use different sources.
For all my seller clients – what does this mean for your listings?
- All Digs sales listings will still appear on Streeteasy and other listing aggregation websites. The software we use to post our listings sends a feed directly to Streeteasy and other aggregation sites that remains unchanged with these recent developments.
______________________
Dan Gotlieb
Digs Realty Group
(917) 675-0037
dan@digsrealtynyc.com
www.digsrealtynyc.com
