Real Estate Syndication Chaos

There was recently a very good post on our messageboard that is applicable to a very wide audience. It was posted by Shelly and David Sheffey:

What happens when one of our listings is submitted to Trulia or any of the others via more than one source?As an example, when we put our listing in the Keller Williams listing service they automatically submit our new listing to Trulia, then we put it into P2 and they send the listing to Trulia, and now that we decide to advertise this listing in the Real Estate book they stick it up there too. Which one wins? Does a new version bump an old version? Do multiple sources cause the listing to disappear altogether?I would suppose the answer might be different for each of the destination sites, but could this be a cause of our missing listings?

It's is a really good question and it's one of the biggest challenges we tackle around here. All syndication partners handle duplicates differently:

• Some post both copies of the listing
• Some filter and take an authoritative feed based on their own criteria [Franchise, MLS, Broker, Agent, 3rd party]
• Some post paid listings first
• Some will use the most recent feed and replace the existing listing with that newest feed.
• Some will take the feed with more information.

For all these reasons, the reports on your status tab will become more and more important over time. We are working with each syndication partner to do what we can to ensure that the feeds from our members are the ones being published. It's a very complicated and politically challenging problem which is why many simple feed solutions are insufficient for this industry.

There may be some people that see that larger picture that exists here. The challenge is identity. How do listing sites identify feeds from franchises, MLSs, brokers and agents? How do brokers ensure their business rules are protected? There needs to be commonality established to for online marketing and there needs to be better identity solutions. How does franchise and MLS feeds provide brokers and agents the statistical feedback they need for marketing and reporting feedback for troubleshooting?

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Sneak Peak

I can't contain myself. In the next couple of days, we are going to release the biggest single release we've ever pushed. I'm excited, i'm nervous and I really just can't wait to get feedback from our members. I'm going to go out on a limb here post some screen shot of just a couple upcoming improvements.

So the first change you'll notice to the syndication screen is that we will have 1 new partner. I won't say who yet. But the major change is the new look and the introduction of spotlight ads. For this release we'll have a couple of partners participating where you can enhance the placement of your listings.

The next screen shot below is of the advanced reporting for syndication. We've heard from our members that there is nothing as frustrating as syndicating your listing, but not knowing where to find it. So we've developed an API that a couple of partners will be using for this release to a few things. First, here is the screen shot:

Publishing reports are available now so you can see what real estate search sites you have syndicated you listings to, if they have been successfully uploaded, and view them through the url they are published on. If there was an error successfully uploading your listing, an error report will indicate the reason. We will have a couple of partners using this API when we release. Results and feedback will hopefully help bring the rest of our partners on board.

The last screen is of our Listings2Go functionality. It provides some code for you to drop on another website you own and display your Point2 listings. The display settings are completely configurable. The real benefit is that it allows you to have more than 1 website, but keep all your listing stats, prospects and publishing reports in 1 control pannel.

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