Texas REALTORS® are receiving requests from Trulia to provide sold data. If you’ve received such a request from Trulia or any party other than your local MLS to report or submit sale price information, keep the following in mind:
Authorization. You need authorization from your client to report sale price information to any third party. The Texas REALTORS® Residential Real Estate Listing Agreement, Exclusive Right to Sell authorizes the listing broker to report the sale price information to the MLS if the listing is to be filed with the MLS. However, it does not authorize the sale price information to be reported to any third party.
Fiduciary. When acting as a fiduciary, your primary duty is to represent the interests of your client.
MLS rules. If you did not participate in a transaction, follow your MLS’s rules as to how you can use the sale price data. Of course, agents can use such data to perform broker price opinions.
Good reason to give them. I don’t ever fill out their request mainly, because I don’t have time to fill out my MLS updates & theirs..Nor do I have the desire to help them
hey agents sympathetic to zillow trulia –
ya might as well offer them use of your supra keys!
.
soon prospects will be asking us if we are ZILLOW instead of are we A REALTOR
Just another of many companies wanting our data to sell it back to us! We give, they all take and make money, a lot of money, off our data. SAD.
Totally agree, then they give lowbal zestimate!
Absolutely! I’m sick of it. What can we do to stop it?
I guess I will never understand why our NAR & TAR representatives have allowed This thievery to occur…. crazy … smh!!!!
Something best happen quickly or we will have lost our industry as we know it for sure!!!
I have been saying that for years.
We sing and dance for sellers 3-5 may be 10 years to get there listing then Zillow take it and sell it to us.
How stupid are we. NAR and ABOR going to die there is no need for them in the future.
It is called… CASH…. hard cold cash. They sell our proprietary information right out from under us.
What about the big national brokerage that lets anyone that signs up with them (buyer or seller) access to sold information? They’re the ones that bug me even more than Zillow and Trulia.
Zillow or Trulia are going to take over our business and we going to be there GOFERS
We need more protection for our industry. Or we are going to be like Lefty drivers
Zillow and Trulia been asking me to join there corm . I think with that they are going to know more about our busines.
TRAC and the BORD going to go away and Zillow going to be in control.
The Realtors have FOOLISHLY given up the Golden Goose years ago to Trulia, Zillow, Redfin and Realtor.com – trying to clean up now is the horse WAY gone from the barn!
First of all Texas is a Non-Disclosure state and we should never disclose what a client pays for their home. There is a good reason for that and TAR fights hard to keep it that way. Protecting home ownership is what we should be doing.
That isn’t what non-disclosure means here.
Vam is correct – that is not what non-disclsoure means. Please call the TAR Hotline to get that clarified for you.
Exactly
Just for clarification, whatever it is that Zillow, Trulia, etc. is or isn’t doing to the Realtor profession, the Realtor.com biz that “takes” the MLS data we’ve already paid to post, track and use for our own success is then sold back to us as leads on our own listings! This, my fellow professionals is without a doubt the most intolerable of all brotherly backstabs…
BAM!!!!!
I have received these calls. The information is for members of mls. That is the reason we have a license and we pay membership fees. I object to any of our MLS proprietary information being used to support these 3rd party sites. We are killing the golden goose.
Not sure who was crazy enough to literally give information away. Eventually, nobody needs us
I am kind of surprised this article came out to begin with. Our MLS data is already being sold by our MLS directly. How do you think that the moment we list any property, it automatically shows up in Zillow, Trulia, Homes.com…. Are we being naive that the sold information is not being updated as well? The calls for information are probably occurring in those markets where data is still not available directly, but I know in most major markets, this data is free flowing and our MLS is collecting a premium for it. Just Saying!
I am concerned. Now that Zillow has purchased Dotloop, will they access our sold information from our loops?!!? Or otherwise datamine? Did I miss this conversation?
Yes, Zillow called……I told them to go to ………… and to never call me again. ct
I would totally lock out any national firm that does not have agents in the area to MLS data. If a survey were taken, Houston Realtors would vote to keep Zillow, Realtor.com, and Trulia from our information. They would also vote to limit the information available to the public as well. The agent pays the dues and the owner or prospect has come to believe the value of the Realtor is greatly diminished because they have access to the data. THANKS REALTOR BOARDS FOR THROWING THE AGENT OVERBOARD FOR THE PUBLIC TO HAVE SOMETHING FREE. Raise the dues to $200… Read more »
On another note, I would charge any new construction home a set fee $150-$300 per home to list on MLS. How many times do you see the selling agent being a non-MLS or actually look up the selling agent to see how many agents are the selling agent in a builder transaction. They use a listing to draw to the neighborhood on OUR LOCAL MLS DATABASES. They cannot design a website that will bring millions of clicks per month like a MLS website. But oh well, let’s give it away as well. The Houston Board of Realtors always talks about… Read more »
I agree they should be paying more. These agents are recognize as top agents for listing these builders homes in bulk, in reality they are not. They are also taking little pay to get the listing. If they are a broker, probably a flat fee. This is what a builder sales associate told me.
I have been posting my closed sales on Zillow for years, and always report the closed price as $ 1. It will kick it back asking if that was a mistake… just click confirm, and it goes right through as $ 1.
And as far as “allowing” it to happen, we always have the option to NOT post to Zillow, Trulia, etc. That IS an alternative on NTREIS. Of course, we can’t talk about it, or the DOJ would come down on us for having illegal boycott. Just say NO, but do it quietly.
I wouldn’t want to give them ANY information. They don’t pay my MLS bills.
I don’t pay them for a services so why should I provide them with any information.
Remember, Texas is a non-disclosure State. That trumps everything else.
Trulia and Zillow put out false data to consumers, I refuse to be a part of Zillow or Trulia because they ride on the shirt tails of the MLS data, redirect our listings to other realtors which pay to get my lead prospect. I feel this should be stopped. They will show a listing with false data history, show it is sold, when it is not. Is there anyway TREC or TAR can address these issues we as realtors deal with on a daily basis with False info being driven to consumers? We as realtors pay our dues for the… Read more »
We don’t understand how Zillow or Trulia are still allowed to be in business. Our owner is former Bank CEO/President. He is appalled at Zillow and Trulia’s level of dishonesty, and, how they have held all realtors “hostage” who do not choose to pay them. When we post a NEW LISTING, if a BUYER clicks on our name to request a SHOWING, it never comes to us because we do not pay Zillow or Trulia. It goes straight to another brokerage in our area who pays over $8,000/month to Zillow. We now have our concerns that Zillow and Trulia also… Read more »
Yes they have given me a form to fill out so I can provide them with sales. The only sale they pick up is the listing sale. So if you don’t have that many listings, your count of sales for the public to see is low. So they advise that you send them the other sales you have with buyers, so that you sells numbers can go up. I have never provided this information because of just that, If they can’t retrieve the information themselves than they shouldn’t have it.
Why are we helping Zillow shove us out? Texas is supposed to be a non-disclosure state, and we should NOT help anyone with the sold information. 1 – All it will do is help city raise taxes even higher, 2 – we’d be sending info that TAR has made clear we should not be sharing & 3 – Zillow is never accurate – and we should knot help them in anyway.
STOP THEM! Before you know it, customers will be asking for Zillow agents instead of REALTOR!!
Why would we do this…come on, I say NO!
Do not share sold amounts with them. We are a non-disclosure state.
I wouldn’t want to give them ANY information. I pay my MLS .