Listings let loose on the Internet

Where's Your Data?

Real estate listings, it seems, are strewn everywhere on the Internet. Do a “Google” search for homes for sale in your town and you’ll get the usual—property listings on broker Web sites, agent Web sites and REALTOR.com. You might also get listings from local and regional newspaper Web sites, for-sale-by-owner aggregators, and auction sites like eBay. You’ll also find listings in some very unusual places, too: on Web sites operated by a wide variety of individuals and entities who aren’t primarily involved in real estate. Access to property listing data used to be tightly controlled by practitioners. Not too long ago, the fear was that if consumers accessed information freely, the need for a practitioner would diminish. Yet Realtors® have discovered that easy access to listings online is an incredibly effective way to attract the business of today’s tech-savvy homebuyers and sellers. However, more often, property listings are appearing on Web sites without the knowledge or permission of homesellers, the listing brokerage, or the MLS whose data is being used. But if the listings are getting exposure, what could be so bad? REALTORS® are discovering that their property data has not only been copied and posted, but also altered. So, who’s leaking the data? It’s not who you’d expect.   Very little misused listing data on the Internet is stolen by shady characters secretly hacking MLS servers. Most often, the source of the misuse of listing data can be traced back to someone who was actually authorized to use the data. This is a crime that thrives on ignorance.

Simple Rules: Identify Brokerage or Broker on every viewable web page and make sure the brokerage name is no less prominent than the agent name. Do not give the impression you are a brokerage if you are not (i.e. John Smith & Company is a team, not a brokerage.) Remove ‘stale’ data - withdrawn, expired, sold, etc. Discuss all these details with your web site vendor. Find out exactly who they might be sharing their data with and how.  Do not assume they are familiar with or complying with Ohio real estate law, the REALTOR® Code of Ethics or CBR Tempo MLS rules.

Ignorance is Not Bliss

A broker-owner, let’s call him Bob, was livid. Bob happened to notice that one of his property listings was appearing on a major Internet portal. It turns out that consumers were being instructed to call Larry, an agent from a competing company, for more information. While Bob was fuming over his lifted listing, Larry had no idea that he’d done anything wrong. In fact, he was quite thrilled that he was getting leads. Here’s what happened.

Larry’s Web site had a feature that let him load information and MLS photos of listed properties onto his Web site. This feature was the main reason why Larry chose this particular Web site company to be his vendor. Some of the properties Larry added were listed by his company, and some were listed by competitors. Larry assumed that since brokers in his MLS were allowed to advertise each other’s listings via the Internet Data Exchange (IDX) program, he was allowed to advertise any property listed in the MLS by any broker anywhere on the Internet. Of course, the IDX program only grants MLS members the authority to advertise listings in compliance with the program’s rules, and even then, only on member-run Web sites.

Larry wasn’t just misusing data, he was also misrepresenting it by allowing his competitors’ listings to be forwarded to other sites with his own contact information attached.

Real estate brokers and agents know better than to advertise competitors’ listings in newspapers, but they often don’t seem to understand that the same rules apply to advertising competitors’ listings on the Internet.

Larry’s actions violated real estate advertising laws in his state, the National Association of Realtors®’ Code of Ethics, and local MLS rules. Larry’s own broker-manager, Marge, who was legally responsible to oversee and supervise his activities, had no idea that Larry even operated a Web site, much less that he was doing so in violation. When Marge was contacted, she quickly made sure that Larry stopped entering other brokers’ listings on his Web site and removed those that were currently posted.

But the damage was already done. The listing information, which had been forwarded multiple times from Web site to Web site, continued to circulate with stale data and incorrect contact information (if any at all).

Unfortunately, far too many companies that market Web sites to real estate licensees don’t understand enough (and in some cases anything) about MLS rules, Realtor® ethics, or real estate law. Even more unfortunately, real estate professionals too often trust that the products and services they buy from such companies have been developed to operate in compliance with the laws and rules they are obligated to follow.

Not All Publicity is Good Publicity

In another case, a newspaper chain that had permission to display listing data on one of its newspaper’s Web sites took the liberty to display the same data on six of its other Web sites without the MLS’s knowledge.

Initially, the MLS determined through a survey that most of its member firms were interested in having their listings on the newspaper’s popular Web site, so the MLS entered into a data licensing agreement with the newspaper and forwarded data.

Yet from the outset, the MLS had a hard time getting the newspaper to follow the terms of the licensing agreement. The paper’s search result pages, for instance, would display contact information for some, but not all, firms. When the MLS asked why, the newspaper said their marketing plan specified that contact names only be displayed with listings when firms bought an “appearance upgrade.” Although the newspaper griped that other MLSs complied with their marketing plan, they agreed to post contact information for all firms.

More than a year later, Sam, a broker-owner member, called the MLS wondering why he had just been asked by a newspaper in another part of the state to buy an “appearance upgrade” for his listings on their Web site. When the MLS investigated, it found the Web sites of six different regional newspapers in the state were displaying data that had been licensed to only one regional newspaper.

When the MLS contacted the newspaper about the misuse of its data, a corporate office representative acknowledged the misuse, but asserted that they were doing the brokers and property sellers a favor by showing the property listings in more places. But the decision to post the listings was not the newspaper chain’s to make. Neither was it the MLS’s decision to make. Property listing data belongs to each listing brokerage. The MLS, as the trustee of that data, only distributes brokerages’ data when and where authorized to do so by the membership. What the newspaper calls a favor, the industry refers to as gross misuse.

Do and Deny

In another case, Company X, which publishes free “homes for sale” magazines, launched a new Web site featuring a “home search” sponsored by brokers who advertise in their magazine. You can imagine how confused Dan, a broker-owner who had stopped advertising in Company X’s magazines, was when he saw his firm’s listings on the magazine’s Web site, accompanied by his competitor’s large banner ads.

The brokers participating in the magazine’s Web site “home search” thought they were sponsoring a legitimate IDX site. They assumed that they could advertise the listings of fellow MLS participants who had opted into the MLS’s IDX program. The only hitch? The right to advertise other brokers’ data is reserved for MLS participants on their own public Web sites, not those of third parties, like the magazine.

Not only were the brokers confused about the rules of IDX, but the Web site company who built the magazine’s site also didn’t know there was anything wrong with placing a home search on the magazine’s Web site using the MLS’s data. While it had agreements to legitimately display listing data on sites it operated for real estate brokers, it did not have permission to make the same data available to third parties like Company X.

They didn’t realize what they were doing was wrong, but once notified, they changed their practices. But that’s not always the case. MLSs are realizing that the most common practice among Web world operatives is to do, not to ask. When caught, deny. Misuse of data on the Internet occurs quietly and is often discovered much too late.

Each day, the Internet contributes more and more to Realtors®’ livelihood. With misuse of data, however, that livelihood is threatened. So MLSs and associations must help their members understand that if they ignore or facilitate data misuse on the Internet, they are essentially picking their own pockets.

David Staebler is the manager of industry relations for the TReND Multiple Listing Service located in King of Prussia, Penn. He can be reached at dstaebler@trendmls.com.

Reprinted with permission from REALTOR® Association Executive magazine, a publication of the National Association of REALTORS®. www.REALTOR.org/RAE