Realtracs said negotiations with Zillow over a direct listing feed were “active and productive” and rescinded the June 8 deadline.
Realtracs and Zillow have extended their ceasefire, with the Nashville-based listing service announcing Monday that it will continue distributing listings to its portals.
“Realtracs remains in active discussions with Zillow, Homes.com, Redfin, and Realtor.com regarding new license agreements,” Realtracs told subscribers in an email Friday. “We continue to believe that these discussions are productive and progress is being made.”
“We remain focused on reaching an agreement that reflects the principles outlined below.” “We expect discussions to remain active and productive, and negotiations to continue beyond the originally targeted June 8 schedule.”
The dispute began on April 29, when Realtrax updated its Grid IDX and VOW rules, which address home sellers’ rights not to publicly display property listings or property addresses.
“Properties listed by sellers who have elected not to display their property listing or property address on the Internet or other electronic forms of display or distribution shall not be included in the public display,” the updated policy reads. “All listings in the MLS grid data that match the consumer’s search criteria are [the] Vendor consumer search results, unless the seller, at its own direction, elects not to include the property listing or property address in public display. ”
The update was in direct conflict with Zillow’s listing access standards, which prohibit listings that are not “widely accessible to the general public in a manner that provides open access.” The portal updated LAS in March to remove the requirement to add listings to the MLS and post them on Zillow within 24 hours.
By May 27, four days before the effective date, Realtrax announced that Zillow was still not complying with the updated policy and would suspend its listing feed by June 1.
However, the parties began negotiations to keep the direct feed to Zillow alive until June 8, when the portal’s current licensing agreement expires. As negotiations continued, the threat to cancel the listing distribution to Zillow was temporarily taken off the table.
“We remain hopeful that we can find a path forward to keep Nashville listings visible to the millions of buyers who search Zillow each month,” a spokesperson for the portal told Inman in an email statement Monday. “Our commitment to real estate transparency is unwavering, and we believe it is possible to adhere to that commitment while continuing to serve the Nashville market together.”
RealTrax reassured its 18,000 members in Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama and Georgia that property distribution remains “uninterrupted” and that even if negotiations fail, brokers can still submit properties to all four major portals through GRID’s Broker Only Export program.
“We remain focused on creating modern deals that reflect the fact that the listings that drive the real estate industry don’t appear in isolation, but come from the expertise, effort, and investment of the brokers and agents who work on behalf of our clients,” Katie St. Francis, chief marketing officer at Realtrax, told Inman in an email Monday. “The professionals who create that value should have a meaningful say in how that value is sourced and used in today’s world of artificial intelligence, data aggregation, lead generation platforms, and large-scale consumer portals.”
Email Marian McPherson
