Posted: 7:30 am Tue, November 22, 2011
By Burl?Gilyard
Tags: Bob Peltier, Daisy Kong, Edina Realty, Georg Gerstenfeld, Leonard MacKinnon, National Association of Realtors, Realtor.com, Trulia.com
Edina Realty President and CEO Bob Peltier. (File photo: Bill Klotz)
Listings will be removed from Trulia and Realtor.com
Edina Realty Home Services, the largest local residential real estate agency, is yanking its property listings from two national websites, one of which is affiliated with the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
Bob Peltier, president and chief executive officer of Edina-based Edina Realty, said the company has provided its listings for years to Realtor.com (the NAR site) and Trulia.com. But now, he said, both are asking real estate companies and agents to pay for ?enhanced listings? on their sites.
?They want to charge us to enhance the listing. It doesn?t seem right to me,? Peltier said.
San Francisco-based Trulia.com says Edina Realty is ?costing their agents future business opportunities.? So far, NAR says, other Realtors aren?t following Edina Realty?s lead.
Peltier claims that companies like Trulia are not really in the real estate business.
?They?re an advertising online company, and the only thing they have to advertise is our data,? Peltier said. ?We?re seeing many aggregators using our information to support their own business model. They?re not Realtors.?
He said that the information supplied to Trulia.com and Realtor.com from Edina Realty is accurate, but that those companies then work with other aggregators and syndicators. Peltier said local agents routinely field calls about out-of-date listings on national websites.
?Our agents get calls all the time about listings that they sold two months ago, six months ago, eight months ago,? said Peltier, who added that he has been weighing the decision for several months. ?I?ve talked to our agents about this. I had the analytics run. This is not a decision we came to lightly.?
Edina Realty announced the move at the end of business Friday. Asked for comment, Trulia spokeswoman Daisy Kong referred to a statement posted on the company?s blog on Friday:
?Edina [Realty] is costing their agents future business opportunities. By removing listings from Trulia, Edina will shut their agents off from millions of potential buyers searching Trulia each month. Edina agents will receive fewer leads from Trulia once their listings are removed.?
Kong also sent a statement from Georg Gerstenfeld, vice president of business services at Trulia: ?Once this change is made, homeowners selling their homes with Edina will not be able to reach 17 [million] potential U.S. buyers who search Trulia each month. Online exposure for a home is paramount in today?s real estate market, and Edina?s decision to remove their listings from Trulia only creates fewer opportunities for their agents to find buyers. While we respect Edina?s decision, we have already seen a strong reaction from concerned consumers and hope Edina?s management recognizes this is not the right move for their clients.?
Peltier said Edina Realty will stop supplying data to Trulia on Nov. 30. He said that individual agents can still choose to list their properties on Trulia. No date has been set for when the company will stop supplying information to Realtor.com, but it is expected to be soon.
?We?re working through that,? Peltier said.
Another large local realty company, Edina-based Coldwell Banker Burnet, has no plans to pull listings from third party websites.
?The objective is to get our seller?s home sold,? said Leonard MacKinnon, director of marketing for Coldwell Banker Burnet. The company has 1,800 sales agents in the region.
MacKinnon said the company?s philosophy has been to get as much exposure as possible for homes on the market.
?The sites that are considered to be the most powerful nationally are Trulia, Realtor.com, Zillow and Yahoo Real Estate. We?ve got a strategic relationship with those four on a national basis,? MacKinnon said. ?We?ve got a little more than a dozen websites that we feed our listing data to.?
MacKinnon said the Internet has significantly changed the business of selling homes.
?It changed our industry quite a bit,? MacKinnon said. ?It certainly gave the consumer access to a lot more information than they had in the old days.?
Peltier said that Realtor.com is a joint venture between the Chicago-based NAR and Move Inc. Campbell, Calif.-based Move Inc. operates a number of real estate-related websites.
Peltier acknowledged that agents are all members of NAR, but he isn?t concerned about ruffling any feathers.
?I don?t care, honestly, if it?s tricky or not,? Peltier said of the potential for political fallout.
A representative of NAR did not have much to say about Edina Realty?s decision.
?Any firm can choose to not have its listings displayed,? said Ralph Holmen, associate general counsel for NAR. ?I don?t think it?s a common thing,? he said about other real estate businesses opting out.
Peltier said Edina Realty has never had a contract with Trulia.com or Realtor.com. The company simply supplied its data for the websites to use.
?We get paid nothing, and we pay nothing,? Peltier said.
Peltier said Edina Realty has never provided data to Zillow.com.
Edina Realty is owned by Minneapolis-based HomeServices of America Inc., which is ultimately owned by Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Famed investor Warren Buffet is the chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway. Edina Realty was founded in 1955.
Peltier acknowledged that given the size of Edina Realty, the company is less reliant on other websites.
?We have the number one website in Minnesota. We know we get more hits and searches on our site than anybody else,? Peltier said of local real estate websites.
Peltier said Edina Realty has approximately 2,250 real estate agents.
Statistics from the Minnesota Department of Commerce showed more than 23,000 real estate brokers and sales professionals in January 2011. That tally includes both residential and commercial agents, but most are residential agents.
Peltier doesn?t buy the argument that Edina Realty?s agents will lose business over the decision.
?It?s easy to say we should be everywhere in marketing, but that?s never worked in the past,? Peltier said. ?Our site gives you everything.?
Peltier noted that several years ago, Edina Realty decided to drop print advertising as a company. Individual agents can still buy print ads, he said.
?We made that choice to benefit our sellers because they weren?t looking for homes in the paper,? Peltier said.
The company remains concerned about misuse of its data, he said.
?This isn?t really about Edina Realty as much as it is about the integrity of the data,? Peltier said. ?We?re trying to figure out what other aggregators are out there scraping our data. Unfortunately, there?s not many rules on the Internet.?
Source: http://finance-commerce.com/2011/11/web-war-real-estate-aggregators-aggravate-edina-realty/
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