Google has looked into every private network, every pre-market feed, and every walled garden to build a national home search based on MLS data, writes Coach’s Darryl Davis.
Google announced Thursday that it is rolling out home listing ads nationwide. The new format shows actual listings with photos, prices and home details within mobile search results in all 50 states. Buyers can call, message, and make reservations with local agents without leaving the search page. This rollout will continue market by market through the summer.
Most agents will skim that headline and file it away as “another technical article.” Please stop. This event changed the conversation around the kitchen table, and for once it shifted in favor of MLS.
Where buyers actually start
A quick question. Where does a buyer’s home search actually start? Not on Zillow. Not Redfin. Before a buyer opens a portal or app, they type something into Google. “Homes for sale in Smithtown.” “3-bedroom homes available near me.” Google is in front of every portal, every brokerage site, every app. This is the front door to all other front doors.
Now, here are the most important details from Thursday’s news: These new in-Google Ads listings are from the MLS. Data flows through HouseCanary’s ComeHome platform based on agreements with participating MLSs. This entire program is powered by MLS data.
Let’s think about what happened. For over a year, we’ve watched the industry build a detour around MLS. Compass, through its partnership with Rocket, migrated its listings to Redfin ahead of MLS. Zillow worked with five leading brokerage partners to build Preview. Howard Hanna built HannaList. Every time a new program came along, MLS became a little less complete and a little less central.
Then the largest search company on the planet looked into this confusing landscape and determined that the cleanest, most complete, and most reliable source of listings in America is still the MLS. It is not the private inventory of a single securities company. This is not a portal pre-market feed. MLS.
new kitchen table script
So what do you say to sellers who are pitched private listings or office-only products? You now have one of the simplest scripts in the industry.
Buyers don’t start their search from one website. They start with Google. And the homes Google introduces are from the MLS. If your home is listed on the MLS, it may appear the moment a buyer searches for it. Otherwise, it will not appear in the exact location where the search begins.
It’s not a scare tactic. That’s geography. Listings that skipped MLS no longer just miss Zillow. I miss the starting line.
Combine this with the numbers you should already know. Zillow’s research team looked at 2.72 million transactions and found that homes sold on the MLS sell for about 1.5% less nationally. In states like California and New York, the gap widened to 3.7 percent, which is the real price of a typical home.
More exposure means more buyers. More buyers means more competition. As competition increases, so do prices. Google just connected the largest exposure channel on the planet directly to the MLS.
And remember balance. If the seller wants privacy, fewer strangers walking through the home, and one agent quarterbacking everything, those are real benefits and it’s their right to choose those. Your job is to help them open their eyes and make choices.
Now that the pool of buyers they’re abandoning includes everyone who starts using Google, the trade-off is only going to get bigger.
Now, the fine print
Before you open that champagne, there are three things you need to know.
1. Although the announcement has been made, it has not yet been reported nationally.
Listings will only appear if the MLS signs an agreement, and so far only three have registered: CRMLS, San Diego MLS, and MyState MLS. If you are not in MLS, your listing will not be included in the program.
So, listen. Email your MLS leadership this week to find out what the plan is. This is one of those rare moments when an agent pushing up from below can move an organization faster than any committee.
2. There is a side door
EXp is already sending upcoming products directly to HouseCanary’s consumer site ComeHome. This means that pre-market inventory reaches the Google world through intermediary feeds rather than through the MLS. If this side door expands, it would give Google one more pre-market step, not the reason it listed on the MLS in the first place. Please look carefully.
3. Remember how this movie ended?
Twenty years ago, the industry offered its listing data to portals for free, then spent the next two decades buying back leads generated from its inventory.
Google’s new format is a paid product. Agents sign up for local service advertising and pay for calls and reservations created by their MLS listings.
That’s no reason to boycott. This is why MLS leaders are negotiating sensible terms now, while Google still needs them, rather than after custom has established itself. This brings me to my final point.
One more thing, to all the readers reading this:
Three MLSs signed contracts at once, through a single intermediary, with terms no one else had ever seen. There are over 450 MLSs in the country. When each person negotiates alone with a company the size of Google, the terms are created by the first person to sign and then swallowed by everyone who signs later.
MLS should answer to Google the same way Google approached it, sitting together at one table. This is a conversation I had with CMLS at their open house conference this September.
For over a year, the loudest people in this industry have been telling us that the MLS is the last place to start listing. On Thursday, the company that organizes the world’s information disagreed. Google looked at every private network, every pre-market feed, and every walled garden to build a national home search based on MLS data.
Companies that have built walls around their properties have been reminded that buyers should never start their search inside someone else’s walls. They start with the search bar. And the search bar selected MLS.
Daryl Davis, CSP, is a nationally recognized real estate speaker, bestselling author, and coach with over 40 years of experience in the industry. For more information, visit darrylspeaks.com.
