Leading online real estate companies Yahoo! Real Estate, Zillow.com®, and Trulia.com today announced they will share a new standard data format for the distribution of real estate listings online. With this standard, real estate franchisors, brokers, multiple listings services, and other listings providers will be able to distribute their listings data to several of the leading real estate sites in one common format, making it easier to get critical information to consumers faster and more efficiently.
“Realtors know the Internet is a great way to promote their listings. Already 80 percent of home searches start online,” said Steve Schultz, director of product management for Yahoo! Real Estate. “But one of the biggest frustrations for publishers is complying with multiple data formats to list their properties online. With this new standard, it will be much easier for brokerages and listings providers to distribute their listings in one format to the largest online real estate companies.”
The new standard feed will be launched later this year, according to the participating companies.
In addition to Yahoo! Real Estate, Zillow and Trulia, several other leading online real estate sites have agreed to adopt the standard, including Homes.com, Homescape, Oodle, Point2 Technologies, Realestate.com, Vast.com, and vFlyer.
“It’s to the advantage of everyone in the industry to adopt a common publishing format,” said Jorrit Van der Meulen, vice president, partner relations at Zillow.com. “We want to make it as easy as possible for our partners to get their listings in front of home buyers.”
The data feed specification will be based on the XML format and will comprise all the requisite components of a listing, such as address, price, square feet, beds, baths, and additional descriptions of the home. Where as today, brokers and listings providers would need to create upwards of a dozen different formats for one listing, the new standard model will significantly reduce the amount of time spent preparing the content for distribution online.
The participating companies plan to launch the standard feed format later this year.
