Edina Realty pulls its listings from national websites | StarTribune.com

Edina Realty pulls its listings from national websites | StarTribune.com.

Edina’s decision has been in the works for some time.  I tip my hat to Edina for having a good website and understand some of their rationale.  However, given that Edina’s website is similar to Realtor.com and Trulia.com in that they too take a data feed to populate their website, I would like to understand more from their decision makers.  Basically, they are disabling/disconnecting these third party sites from Edina listings however, they are assuming that other local firms will not do the same to them in terms of how they populate their site.

As realtors, we search the MLS vs. public websites for our clients.  We have the technology to give our clients access to this information via portals/reports in very user friendly and relevant formats.

Some of the controversy is that these third party sites pull the data and reformat it and then charge realtors to “access leads”.  They have made millions/billions with this data mining and formatting and of course from advertisers.  The few leads I’ve received for inquiries on my rentals/listings were on very low priced homes where perhaps buyers have difficulty finding representation.

Like Edina, we have a niche website – Minnesota Lofts and Condos, a great site that even has apps to download to your Smart Phone/ipad.

Like Edina agents, we at Better Homes and Gardens work day-in and day-out to know our local market and serve our customers.  We will soon expand our web presence to better service those buying or selling single family homes in the metro.  Our current site is useful for this Explore Twin Cities.