The old “spray and pray” method of listing distribution is becoming a thing of the past. Real estate professionals are becoming more selective about where they send their listings and insisting on seeing results.
ListTrac, a free tool from real estate software startup Vendigi, is designed to help agents and brokers see those results, monitoring listing performance across websites. So far, 14 multiple listing services representing 210,000 agents and brokers in 13 states have signed up to incorporate the tool.
The latest to announce an agreement for ListTrac is North Alabama MLS, a 3,000-member MLS known in the industry for its direct syndication agreements with Zillow, Trulia, realtor.com and Homes.com, as well as other third-party portals. NALMLS is a subsidiary of the Huntsville Area Association of Realtors.
Kipp Cooper
“ListTrac provides fantastic metrics and reports that will complement our existing dashboard and tools, allowing our members to share detailed data easily with their customers and clients and make informed decisions about how to most effectively spend their advertising dollars,” said Kipp Cooper, CEO of the Huntsville association and NALMLS, in a statement.
ListTrac’s tagline is the “Google Analytics for listings.” The tool’s monitoring code collects listing performance information on websites where a listing appears and feeds it into dashboards for listing agents and brokers.
Sites monitored include the MLS consumer-facing website, Valleymls.com and members’ Internet data exchange (IDX) websites.
Trent Gardner
In the first quarter, ListTrac will also be deployed on the MLS’s Paragon MLS system in order to track listing views by other agents, viewed reports, and how many consumers view listings via the MLS’s collaboration tool, ListTrac co-founder Trent Gardner told Inman.
ListTrac does not yet track listing performance on third-party portals, though that is its eventual goal. The startup is working with brokers and MLSs on agreements with portals, Gardner said.
In order for ListTrac to work, publishers — portals, IDX site vendors, MLSs — must include a snippet of monitoring code on their sites that will send information back to the ListTrac server, where it is stored and accessed by the MLS and its members.
Via ListTrac, NALMLS agents and brokers will be able to see and share with clients how many times each listing is viewed on which website, the average time someone spends viewing each listing, and the number of leads being received from each website on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, the MLS said.
ListTrac heat map
Listing agents will also be able to provide sellers with performance reports that detail the online activity of their listing, as well as overall market activity within a listing’s local area, the MLS added.
“ListTrac will provide an ‘apples-to-apples’ comparison gathered from each website or app that displays participating brokers’ listing content,” Cooper said.
ListTrac dashboard
Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to note that 14 MLSs representing 210,000 agents and brokers have signed up for ListTrac. An earlier version of the story put that figure at six MLSs.
