StreetEasy, a listing portal from Zillow Group, is aiming to ease the input and management of listings with a new agent app and updated program created in partnership with New York City-based brokerage Douglas Elliman. Not everyone in New York City’s residential brokerage industry is thrilled with the change.
Listing Tools is a new platform that caters to the more than 50 percent of agents who input and manually manage their listings. Developed with agent feedback, the platform aims to reflect the fields and features that agents use most often by streamlining data entry and marketing.
Matt Daimler. (Credit: StreetEasy)
“We spent the last year focused on better understanding the challenges local agents faced and how we could improve their day-to-day with technology,” said Matt Daimler, general manager of StreetEasy, in a statement.
“As a result, we built something that marries the importance of data accuracy with convenience, and ultimately a platform that empowers agents to focus on what they do best: advising buyers, sellers and renters on their real estate decisions. We’re proud to work with forward-thinking brokerages and agents to usher this next phase of tech into the NYC real estate market.”
The platform will come in a free mode and an enterprise mode. Both include StreetEasy’s first listing management mobile app. From the app, agents will be able to create and publish a listing, take or rearrange photos, update the listing and schedule an open house.
Both will also include Agent Spotlight, a new branding tool that will provide agents with the option to have exclusive placement and branding on their listings, essentially a workaround for Premier Agent. Agent Spotlight, available to agents who manually input listings, will cost $333 per sales listing, each month for three months, then is free, according to a Zillow spokesperson.
“The Agent Spotlight program is another example of StreetEasy’s lack of respect for the hard work that agents put in to acquire and market listings,” Warburg Realty CEO Frederick Peters told Inman, through a spokesperson. “In essence, this new program sells agents the right, for $333 per month per listing, not to have their properties falsely advertised on StreetEasy.”
“It outrages me that my agents should be asked to pay to make sure that an outside agent, who has paid StreetEasy to have their name appear on a listing to which they have NO connection, does not inappropriately receive the benefit of the leads which that listing generates,” Peters added.
StreetEasy designates the listing agent on each listing, regardless of whether or not there are Premier Agents advertising their services on an individual listing.
The enterprise version was developed in partnership with Douglas Elliman and allows integrations for brokerages. Brokerages will be able to get a data file of listing data back that will allow them to syndicate out. The enterprise version will integrate with a brokerage’s marketing platform and allow for single sign-on.
“Essentially, with enterprise, [brokerages] can adopt StreetEasy listing tools as their back-end system, which is what Elliman is doing,” a StreetEasy spokesperson said.
In 2017, StreetEasy and Douglas Elliman announced they were working on a listings input platform to replace Douglas Elliman’s brokerage listings network Limo. Listing Tools is the fruit of that labor and is now being taken public.
The new platform will roll out in phases over the next few months, with the enterprise version first and the free version coming later. The mobile app will launch this spring.
In December, StreetEasy raised its listing fee for rentals from $3 to $4.50 in an effort to improve “listing integrity.”
Update: Story updated with additional comment from Warburg Realty CEO Frederick Peters and clarification on Agent Spotlight costs.
