We are George-WashingDONE doing business.
Welcome to Real-life Game of Thrones, with less fur, sans dragons, and uberBLACKs instead of majestic horses. I know we talked about this last newsletter and I really hate sequels because they always tend to be a total let down, e.g. Land before Time vs. Land Before Time’s II-XIV, but this StreetEasy versus The Entire Brokerage Community drama is getting NeNe-Leaks-from-Real-Housewives-of-Atlanta Good
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During the first week of August, four of the city’s leading brokerages announced they would no longer feed rental or sales listings through to StreetEasy, instead feeding them solely to the REBNY’s Residential Listing Service (RLS), which serves to consolidate all data into a single transparent feed with clean data. Compass, Stribling, Brown Harris Stevens and Town took this strong step; the four representing 20% of the bulk on StreetEasy. This move is essentially a statement that if the website would like to collect listing data on their own dime through RLS, they can do so like every other platform instead of misusing agents’ information and capitalizing on such. With 200 aggregators signed on to receive the RLS feed, including Apartments.com and Realtor.com, it’s baffling why StreetEasy won’t concede and function in an ethical manner like everyone else.
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While this battle is so far from over, the individuals hurting the worst right now are the agents. Many of us are still forking over the $3-a-day fees because our fiduciary duty lies with our sellers/landlords and it would be a disservice not to give our clients the full market’s attention. We’ve talked in the past about how hard it is for agents to get listings, which we can’t afford to lose, and how we really don’t make that much money, so these fees and potential loss of business punch us in the gut.
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While change is the only true constant, I have no doubt that this is the beginning of the end for StreetEasy’s choke-hold on the market. As the leaders in the brokerage community band together, support REBNY and continue to cut ties with StreetEasy, other platforms are rising up and championing our cause. While the battle is largely occurring behind the scenes, a storm is coming with a guaranteed reconstruction that will change this industry.
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^LADIES AND GENTS, THIS IS sort of HOW THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION STARTED.
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What we can all hope is that Streeteasy becomes as pathetic and pitiful, yet endearingly amusing, as the twitter account for the last operating Blockbuster:
