Syndicated listings are creating 3rd party access to the MLS data without a proper informed consent to Realtors. The intent of syndicating your listings is to provide your clients (sellers) the opportunity to advertise their home for sale in as many areas as possible. However, the predator companies that offer syndication are taking advantage of the Realtors intentions and exploiting their lack of control over MLS Data.
When companies such as Zillow, Truilia and Homes. Com offer syndicated listings to agents really what they are offering is the opportunity for agents to provide them with their content they need to make money of them. Without your listings they could not charge other Realtors huge fees to put their face next to your listings. The reason that I think this is not ethical is due to the SEO benefits and monetary gain that these 3rd parties are making off Realtors. They are making it harder to compete with them on placing on the first page of Search Engines and they are charging to much money to advertise on their web pages. As more agents buy advertising their prices get higher and higher plus they offer exclusive advertising to agents. Therefore, what this could lead to is an unauthorized creation of national MLS boards. They will not have IDX feeds but they will get agents to sign up on their web pages that have IDX feeds and update their MLS data off those agents IDX feeds. In fact they give them widgets to put on their web page and share data directly with their web content.
This creates a lot of damage for agents who use their IDX feed to work with buyers. Instead of Realtors ranking within search engines these 3rd parties are getting all the rankings and charging Realtors to place within those ranks. The sad part is that I don't think the Search Engines would rank these 3rd parties very well if they understood what was happening. Search Engines try to offer users the best content available when they enter a search subject. So why would a Search Engine think that a 3rd party add is better than direct access to an IDX feed with an MLS board? After all the intent of the third party is to make it appear as if though they are offering tools for home buyer to search for homes. Even though there real intent is to charge as much money as possible for advertising and spread into as many markets as fast as possible. In fact most of their content never updates. So if you syndicate your listings to them they will leave them on their web page for months after they have sold. This leads to poor service to people who are searching on these web pages trying to find home for sale. In fact most the time they don't even realize that they are only viewing a select few homes for sale in an area. Most users are under the impression that they are searching every home for sale within a community.
The truth is that Realtors pay to maintain the MLS data and we are the only people that can offer a direct IDX feed from a web page so clients truly can search every home for sale within that selected community. This offers clients better service because we are local experts that sell homes in that area. We have performed CMA's and we know what only trained experts in a local market can know. It is very frustrating when you call a Real Estate company like Trulia and ask them about Kennewick Washington and they cannot even pronounce the name right but they are number one on google as an authority in the area. Their content is cub standard and their intent is to make money of Agents instead of provide a service to clients. I would not be so considered if I did not find out that this is getting really bad. Trulia has received permission to have direct access to the MLS date through a IDX feed through one association out of Idaho. So Trulia told the MLS board that they wanted to be able to update their records and use the data to keep up on the market. The truth is that Trulia want to be able to add as many homes for sale on their web pages and they are sick of using 3rd party agreements. If we allow them to spread through the boards with this trend we will loose our power we have by ciontroling the MLS that we pay for. In fact Trulia and Zillow allow For Sale By Owner to advertise on their web page. So from a marketing perspective, as a Realtor, how much marketing power do you lose over this? You will have to pay to maintain the MLS then you will have to pay to be on Trulias web page. Why wouldn't you just have your own IDX feed and tell Trulia to pack their bags? We are allowing a muliti million dollar company to take advantage of us and use us to make a lot of money. It is getting really bad because they have the money to partner up with other huge companies like Yahoo and CNN Money and they pay to for their deception to take advantage of Realtors and their clients.
There is a bunch of signs of trouble with these 3rd parties if you look into what they are doing.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42604261
http://www.inman.com/news/2011/04/11/zillow-acquires-listings-syndication-platform-postlets
http://appraisersforum.com/showthread.php?t=158124
http://realestate.money.cnn.com/
http://activerain.com/blogsview/567366/trulia-screen-scraping-
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