Realtor.com Loses New York Listings Over Data Licensing Concerns

The Newscorp-owned U.S. real estate portal Realtor.com is reportedly set to lose a number of key New York listings from its website due to a disagreement with the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY).

Citing an email from Realtor.com, the New York-based real estate publication The Real Deal is reporting that due to a disagreement over data licensing, REBNY will no longer syndicate listings to the portal. A REBNY spokesperson told the publication that Realtor.com refused to sign a standard data licensing agreement which is required for portals displaying the association's listings.

REBNY has some 16,000 members consisting of agents and home builders as well as lawyers, architects and many others involved in the city's real estate value chain. The association syndicates its members' listings to several portals and is perhaps the closest equivalent to the MLS in New York where there has never been a comprehensive Multiple Listings Service.

It is not immediately clear just how many listings Realtor.com will lose from Monday. Many large real estate brokerages operating in New York such as Compass and Douglas Elliman have a direct listings syndication agreement with the portals and so will continue to list their New York properties on the country's number two portal despite the data disagreement.

The news that REBNY will no longer syndicate listings to Realtor.com comes at an interesting time in the development of the portal landscape in New York. New residential industry entrant CoStar announced that it was working alongside REBNY to build a new challenger portal in the city last October. The partnership had been an open secret for some time and last month the new Citysnap portal launched with REBNY member listings front and centre.

This is not the first time that REBNY has fallen out with a portal. Realtor.com first signed a listings syndication agreement with REBNY in 2017 at the height of tensions between REBNY and the Zillow-owned New York portal StreetEasy. StreetEasy has a history of falling out with New York agents. There was a significant disagreement with leading brokerage Douglas Elliman over the manual entry of listings on its system in 2020 and then industry-wide anger at the portal increasing prices last summer.