Frustration with the city’s dominant listings platform is driving agents to question its value and look for alternatives
therealdeal.com
Fed-up brokers are going off-road to avoid StreetEasy
More agents are looking for ways to get around the city’s dominant listings platform
Over the first few months of 2020, real estate agents began seeing a strange new trend in their inboxes: emails advertising listings not available on a certain popular listing site.
“NOT ON STREETEASY!” screamed the subject line of a Compass team’s e-blast about a Financial District studio going for $650,000.
“Surprise your clients as this will NOT be found on StreetEasy!” an agent from Sotheby’s International Realty wrote about a $1.5 million sales listing on the Upper East Side, and an email from a Corcoran Group broker touted a $1.2 million Boerum Hill listing with the subject line, “The best condo in Brooklyn is not on StreetEasy.”
The senders are brokers who hang their shingles with some of the biggest firms in the city, including Halstead, Brown Harris Stevens and Keller Williams New York City, and the properties are prime listings. Of 15 such emails viewed by The Real Deal touting newly listed properties being kept off StreetEasy, most were sales — with asking prices reaching as high as $5.9 million — but one of the rental was asking $13,874 per month.
Multiple brokers say they began receiving the email blasts around early February — about the same time StreetEasy stopped accepting listings feeds from brokerage firms, and a month after the listings platform hiked its daily listing fees for the third consecutive year.
It’s a far cry from the organized boycott of StreetEasy some brokers have urged in the past without success. But this apparently organic, uncoordinated shift in agent behavior may forecast an opening for a shakeup in the lucrative and competitive market of where home listings get posted and how consumers get access.
Close to 5.8 million existing homes across the U.S. were sold in February at a median price of $270,100, according to the National Association of Realtors. And who gets to take a slice of those transactions is the subject of fierce competition among major public companies that display listings, such as Zillow Group, Redfin and
News Corp.’s Realtor.com, and brokerages, like Elliman’s holding company, Vector Group, or Corcoran’s parent, Realogy.
Last quarter, Zillow reported $944 million in revenues compared to Redfin’s $233 million and News Corp.’s $294 million. Elliman’s revenues came in at $784 million, while Realogy, which doesn’t break out revenue by business, reported $1.3 billion overall.
In the New York market, the 800-pound gorilla of the listings game is StreetEasy, which Zillow acquired for $50 million back in 2013.
The city’s dominant listings platform was popular with brokers at first but began sparking their ire in 2017, when it started ramping up prices, rolling out new paid advertising programs and changing the way listing data was uploaded.
While tension between the brokerage community and the site has grown over the years, rival sites have never caught hold as viable competitors. But broker resistance might finally be reaching a tipping point, providing an opening for new challengers.
StreetEasy executives declined to be interviewed for this story, but a spokesperson acknowledged the competitive landscape in a statement: “We know agents have options when it comes to posting listings, and we work hard to deliver agents the biggest audience and consumers the best experience.”
Email blasting new listings might still be a marginal phenomenon, but the volume has increased so much that Fritz Frigan, Halstead’s executive director of sales and leasing, has added a question — “Is Your Listing on StreetEasy?” — to his weekly open house index survey.
Last quarter, Zillow reported $944 million in revenues compared to Redfin’s $233 million and News Corp.’s $294 million. Elliman’s revenues came in at $784 million, while Realogy, which doesn’t break out revenue by business, reported $1.3 billion overall.
In the New York market, the 800-pound gorilla of the listings game is StreetEasy, which Zillow acquired for $50 million back in 2013.
The city’s dominant listings platform was popular with brokers at first but began sparking their ire in 2017, when it started ramping up prices, rolling out new paid advertising programs and changing the way listing data was uploaded.
While tension between the brokerage community and the site has grown over the years, rival sites have never caught hold as viable competitors. But broker resistance might finally be reaching a tipping point, providing an opening for new challengers.
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StreetEasy executives declined to be interviewed for this story, but a spokesperson acknowledged the competitive landscape in a statement: “We know agents have options when it comes to posting listings, and we work hard to deliver agents the biggest audience and consumers the best experience.”
Email blasting new listings might still be a marginal phenomenon, but the volume has increased so much that Fritz Frigan, Halstead’s executive director of sales and leasing, has added a question — “Is Your Listing on StreetEasy?” — to his weekly open house index survey.
Frigan said he suspects that fed-up brokers are trying to figure out if working with StreetEasy is really worth it after all at this point.
“I think they’re testing,” Frigan said, “to see how valuable StreetEasy is in driving traffic to the listing.”
“Not on StreetEasy”
Anecdotally, at least, it appears StreetEasy might be failing that test.
“When I sent it via email, I actually got a better response being off market than when it was on the market,” said Kaptan Unugur, a Sotheby’s agent who emailed out a $2.25 million listing of a three-bedroom in Tribeca with the “Not on StreetEasy” banner.
“It creates some allure and some exclusivity,” he explained of the approach. “It’s like buying a piano signed by Elton John, and there’s only a hundred of them.”
Before the coronavirus pandemic ground the market to a halt in mid-March, Sotheby’s broker Jeremy Stein said he was receiving between two to five emails every day for listings labeled “Not on StreetEasy,” revealing cracks in the conventional wisdom that StreetEasy is the only game in town.
n the New York market, the 800-pound gorilla of the listings game is StreetEasy, which Zillow acquired for $50 million back in 2013.
The city’s dominant listings platform was popular with brokers at first but began sparking their ire in 2017, when it started ramping up prices, rolling out new paid advertising programs and changing the way listing data was uploaded.
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While tension between the brokerage community and the site has grown over the years, rival sites have never caught hold as viable competitors. But broker resistance might finally be reaching a tipping point, providing an opening for new challengers.
igned by Elton John, and there’s only a hundred of them.”
Before the coronavirus pandemic ground the market to a halt in mid-March, Sotheby’s broker Jeremy Stein said he was receiving between two to five emails every day for listings labeled “Not on StreetEasy,” revealing cracks in the conventional wisdom that StreetEasy is the only game in town.
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“That starts to make people like myself lose faith in using that search engine exclusively,” he said. “You can’t just do a search on StreetEasy and think, ‘I’m done.’”
Stein said he’s not personally shopping listings by email, and he’s continuing to put his properties on StreetEasy — at least for now.
“The reason I do is I still think, at least at this point, there are still enough consumers using it that its exposure is worthwhile,” he said. “However, I’m starting to question that.”
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