We received confirmation today from OAR CEO Robert Fletcher that Firelands Association of REALTORS® is in full compliance with the core standards requirements as set by NAR.  The deadline to fulfill thsese requirements was June 30, 2015.

Congratulations to our leadership team, staff, and legal counsel for their hard work and dedication!

Dear Broker Members,

As you may be aware the data feed from ListHub to Zillow Group, including Trulia was discontinued effective April 7, 2015. This action was due to the fact that Zillow Group could not come to terms with ListHub on a new agreement. If you were feeding Zillow through ListHub you will see a disruption of service. In order to insure that this feed was not interrupted the Directors at the March meeting instructed the staff and legal counsel to contact Zillow to try to work out a contract that would mirror our agreement with ListHub. We worked diligently to negotiate in good faith an acceptable agreement with no success. Several unfavorable terms were included that would not allow the Directors to enter into a long-term agreement with Zillow Group.

The Board of Directors held a special meeting to discuss and deliberate the options to move forward. Notice was sent out and comments were allowed from the membership to ensure all sides were heard. The Directors, after discussion, came to the conclusion that it was not in the best interest of the MLS to enter into the long-term agreement. A motion was passed to enter into a shorter term, six-month agreement to allow data to be sent to Zillow while a more favorable agreement could be negotiated.

The short term solution to the problem will be the creation of a Zillow dashboard very similar to the ListHub dashboard. This will be an OPT-IN product and will require you to sign on to the dashboard to allow your listing data to be live to Zillow. If you do not take action no listing data will be published to Zillow. I would caution all members to consider all ramifications of entering into a long-term agreement with Zillow. At this time our agreement is for only 6 months, and they have not been willing to negotiate on terms in the contract that we feel protects your data.

In conclusion, we will continue to work on this issue. We will be scheduling a Broker meeting and presenting the information to the MLS Committee for further investigation. As always if you have further questions please feel free to contact either your Directors or myself.

Thank you for your support,

David W Freitag, RCE
Chief Executive Officer