The controversy over data ownership in the real estate classifieds industry appears to be on the rise, with a new report revealing real estate agents do not trust third party portals.
A survey by data management company Transmit Data into the security, ownership and general handling of data within the industry revealed a lack of trust of third party data administrators, CRMs and property portals by real estate agents.
Christy Barnish, Customer Experience Manager of Transmit Data, said the findings were a surprise.
“We were shocked to discover the lack of client trust with third party software vendors and the data being managed,” she said.
“The real estate sector employs data transformation and translation services to send property listings between systems and websites, largely run by third party groups such as news media and publishing.
“It is quite astounding that real estate agencies and franchises do not trust the companies that provide the solution to upload and transfer the listings on the agent’s behalf.”
The source of the mistrust appears to be the insecure nature of the transfer process.
“Once we identified the source of the distrust, we came to the realisation that the real estate industry has lost control of the data they (franchisees, sales agents) generate and thus believe in owning”, said Barnish.
“This is a very concerning fact – real estate companies have lost all say into where their data is sent, used, stored and for what purposes. From the research we conducted, the distrust is warranted.”
CEO of Transmit Data, Joel Leslie, said agents need a way to turn off a listing and take control of when and where the listing is dispatched.
“Once a real estate agent or broker uploads the listing to their listings system, CRM and or property website, in many cases, they are signing their rights away concerning ownership of that listing,” he said.
“This is why there is so much animosity concerning listings data within in the real estate industry.”
