Real estate search portal Trulia Inc. today announced it has signed an agreement with North Carolina Mountains MLS (NCMMLS) to receive a direct feed of the MLS’ 17,000 listings.
“Having the most accurate listing data available to both the industry and consumers requires cooperation between multiple parties,” said Alon Chaver, vice president of industry services at Trulia, in a statement.
Other MLSs providing Trulia with direct feeds include the Houston Association of Realtors, Midwest Real Estate Data LLC (MRED), Boston-area MLS Property Information Service Inc., Bay Area Real Estate Information Services Inc. in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Connecticut MLS.
Trulia and other third-party portals like Zillow receive a bulk of their listings from sources other than directly from the MLS including brokers and agents, and via syndication platforms like ListHub and Point2.
The variety of listing sources creates challenges to listing accuracy and comprehensiveness in many markets, according to recent studies by ZipRealty and Redfin.
In January, Trulia announced it had introduced technology to continuously update listings it received directly from MLSs as often as every 15 minutes.
In 2011, Trulia launched the Trulia Direct Reference program, in which MLS data takes precedence over other sources when discrepancies are found.
Increasingly, Trulia and Zillow are looking for ways to secure access to accurate data directly from MLSs and brokerages and to sidestep their reliance on getting listings via ListHub and Point2. Those companies have recently tightened their data licensing agreements, restricting how the data can be used, challenging the listing portals’ business models.
In 2012, both Trulia and Zillow launched programs where, in exchange for enhanced listing presence, brokerages provided a direct feed of their listings to the portals.
Last July, Zillow made a play for direct data feeds from 50 of the 200 MLSs that Zillow was receiving data from via ListHub, which is owned by realtor.com operator Move Inc.
Realtor.com, which thanks to its long-standing ties to the National Association of Realtors receives listings directly from nearly all U.S. MLSs, launched a “Find it First” marketing campaign in March touting the timeliness and accuracy of its listings.
NCMMLS has about 2,200 members and is headquartered in western North Carolina, near Asheville.
