Technology Providers that can Syndicate Your Real Estate Listings

Great graphic Drew! I don't understand why Point2 is the center of the image though. I am guessing it is something they put together.

Well I clicked the graphic.... duh. :)

Sorry Jonathan - it was the only cool-looking graphic I could find (and I know everyone loves pictures in blog posts) :).

Great stuff, I'm always looking for new outlets.

Dont forget a la mode (http://www.alamode.com)
Our Agent sites already offer syndication with trulia, oodle, vast, yahoo, house.com, videohomes and our own XSties Network. We also recently upgraded our listings engine, you should check it out.

Richard-
I just added a la mode to the list.

All these new outlets are great but sure seems like a lot of work to get your listings on all of them. I currently use postlets.com which sends to quite a few but wish there was a service that did them all somehow.

Which portals is postlets not syndicating to that you'd like them to?

I guess all the other ones that are out there. After reading this post I signed up for Point2 and the interface is awful. You can only use IE, it takes forever to load anything, and you get a lot of error messages when trying to set up. They definitely don't have all the bugs worked out. Love the concept but would like for it to work better.

Sorry to hear that you had problems with our interface. It is true that you can only use IE to upload, mostly b/c we use an ActiveX component – we should change that. Usually our uploading is quite snappy. Are you referring to upload speed or just the time it takes to enter a listing? I would love to hear any specific issues you have (errors etc.). One thing I would like to point out to this thread is that syndication can’t be a “fire and forget” thing. Your customers are going to want links to ALL the sites you put their listing on. At Point2 we have been syndicating listings for two years now and have learned a lot. We are working with all of our publishing partners to have them provide us publishing reports that we make available to the real estate professional and the seller. We also collect analytics from each publisher (views, clicks, prospects created, etc.) and aggregate them at the individual listing level. So if you look at a listing you can see how many clicks, views and prospects each partner has generated. We also allow for an agent or broker to purchase “spotlight” ads (premium placement) on sites where it is offered like NYT, Google (via adwords), Livedeal and Point2homes (our reference implantation). Lastly, we are working on our interface and plan to aggregate stats by partner and show an effective ROI.

Drew, I can’t wait to add Zillow to our graphic!

The toughest part of putting listings in is the neighborhoods section. It's extremely difficult to select the correct neighborhood. I work in Lake and Orange County and the interface is not readily interchangeable. I put in a listing in Lake County and can not get it to change back to Orange County. I think this product would be the best choice out there if you did not need IE and if a little more user friendly and faster. Even with the bugs, I know plenty of agents who pay Advanced Access tons of money for an inferior product so I guess there shouldn't be any complaints but I hate things that don't work all the time.

I have used Point 2 Agent for over 4 years. They are constantly upgrading their service. Point 2 is a great website to market listings. While other agents are slowing down, my sales are increasing. 9 out of my last 11 sales have come from Point 2 Agent.

Point2 is great, but they have lost 1/3 of their syndication partners recently. Hopefully they get things straightened out soon.

Check us out at www.ListHub.net!

Hey Drew,

Here is another company for you list, What I Want Podcasting.

They develop tons of real estate video podcasts.

splaht.com is by far the easiest that I have found located at http://www.splaht.com . You just paste in a link to the details page of any listing and they post it to the same classified sites as postlets and vflyer. No templates to create so no extra time involved, but you do need to have your listings on a website so you can link to them.

great info and list of technology provides and listing syndication. It is essiential to get you property in front of everyone in today's market by utilizing all channels of distribution

Thanks for the great list of companies. To bad wordpress doesn't do it automatically :)

I haven't tried splaht.com. I'll try that one today. I have been using point 2 agent for a few years and love it.

For those who want to syndicate are large number of listings without have to retype them all by hand, we have a program that reads the lisings directly from your database and automatically submits them on a regular basis.

Graham

For those who want to syndicate are large number of listings without have to retype them all by hand, we have a program that reads the lisings directly from your database and automatically submits them on a regular basis.

See: http://www.artis-usa.com/Products/RES/RESCorp.asp

Graham

Is there a plugin for wordpress, actually would be more so for an iframe IDX.

this is not a cynical question; it is a real one... has anyone ever procured a sale from syndicating to one of these listing sites? If so, which one?

I am curious if most agents who use these are doing so primary as somewhat of a strawman to acquire listings and appease their sellers? No judgment here; I'm just curious.

I love this list, it really helps as I'm looking for an internet marketing solution for a broker.

However, I'm struggling with having a website where the MLS data is IMPORTED into the site database rather than INTEGRATED through frames or links so that no one has to input the data twice AND being able to push our own listings to a syndicator instead of having to input.

If anyone knows of a solution like this, please let me know. It seems that would be the ultimate solution. Using something like Point2 is great, except that you still have to put the listings into the system by hand instead of getting them from the MLS.

Hi Heather,

This is something I can help you with. Submitting your listings directly is done by one of 2 methods. The first is by having someone in your IT Dept map and create the feeds for each syndicate directly from your database. The second is to use a software utility that does this for you.

Please be aware that "One size" does not fit all. Each syndicate has thier own set of specs and requirements that you will have to meet before your listings are accepted. It should also be noted that many of them are now requiring a minimum of 100 listings in a feed, which is largely due to the time and resources required to review and accept new feed submissions.

If I can be of further assistance, please let me know.

Graham Davis
www.ARTIS-USA.com

Great article however, you left out ecampaignpro.com. Not only can you syndicate your listing, but you can also post it to twitter and email your flyer to any market in the country. So far our customers love the syndication feature and truly see the value ouf utilizing it as part of their marketing efforts.

I just added it to the list.

Another site that you forgot is sawitonline.com.

Gabe at realbird is very helpful. The program is pretty clunky for home searches, but its power is in the syndication.

iwantanoffer.com provides syndication services.

It seems most of the comments about syndication rely on either entering data manually somewhere or other. www.xml2u.com has a technology that can extract the listings from your own site and generate an xml data file. You just pass the file to as many portal sites as you wish to upload to, and forget it.