Homestore, REALTOR.com hear you when you speak up. Do it more often

We have been grateful for the overwhelming response of our customers and well-wishers alike as well as media coverage of our situation with Homestore demanding we disable our Agent XSites REALTOR.com® listings import feature. The issue of ownership and proper use of a broker/agent's data needs to be brought to the fore – Homestore, through its public statements, seems to agree with us on that. Hopefully, the issue is galvanizing enough agents and brokers to go to their boards and find out if they sign their lives away when they deal with MLSs.

What we've tried very hard to make clear – first to Homestore, who doesn't seem to get it, then to you, who do – is that:

• a la mode never used the data, doesn't want the data, can't have it, can't touch it, can't sell it, can't do anything to it. We never could.
• It was the individual broker/agent – whom Homestore, through its REALTOR.com® Terms of Use, insisted be the owner of the listing – who was downloading his or her listing information to his or her personal website for his or her business use.
• Citing agreements forbidding "third parties" from "scraping" REALTOR.com®, Homestore demanded that you, the individual broker/agent who owns the listing in the first place, not have access to your data from REALTOR.com® on your personal website.
• It's your data. We know it, you know it. Homestore has another idea, and claims "copyright." We think they're crazy.

The issue is getting a lot of attention. Inman News ran the first story on the issue – a subscription is required to read it now – and it remains as of this writing one of the most popular links on the Inman News home page, after spending most of last week at number one. Clearly, this is an issue that resonates with agents and brokers. Our CEO, Dave Biggers, and Homestore's President, Alan Dalton, have been invited by Inman to produce 7-8 paragraph statements of our positions in this important matter for publication side-by-side in a future Inman News article. Ours will be done shortly; hopefully, Homestore will participate as well.

Realty Times covered the issue very comprehensively and objectively, in two long stories: Who Has the Right To Publish Your Listing Online? and Website Vendor-Homestore Dispute: Each Misses The Point, Says The Other. In the latter piece, Allan Merrill, EVP Corporate Development of Homestore, told Realty Times, "Our agreements with the MLSs that provide us with listings don't allow us to do what a la mode wants us to do. We respect the agreements we have with the MLSs, and we will protect their rights."

In its canned response Homestore has been sending out to brokers and agents who have complained about their actions in this case, they, through Mike Long, CEO, say: "Since we are just licensees of the listing content, we are obligated to prevent any 'scraping' of listing content from REALTOR.com®. This is not a choice we can make. It is a contractual obligation. Any third party seeking to obtain listings must seek them directly from local MLSs and brokers just as we do. We legally cannot permit them to obtain these listings from REALTOR.com®."

Read that again. For you, the listing owner, to "obtain" your listing you must do so directly from your local MLS or broker. You are the broker, or the broker's agent. We are, again, prepared to give Homestore the benefit of the doubt and assume they are misunderstanding what's going on here, but it is worth noting that Homestore's Cease and Desist letter did not accuse a la mode of violating its "copyright" to your data, but of facilitating your violation of their "copyright." So how confused can they really be about who's using the data?

We think they're hiding behind their MLS agreements, and have said so. Real Estate Technology Insight covered the issue (subscription required) as well, and will feature an in-depth story in its next print edition. Real Estate Intelligence Report will feature a piece on the issue in its next quarterly print edition. We received so many requests for statements or interviews that we released our own press release on the matter which can be found here.

You, as the listing owner, are not a "third party." We think they're doing this so home buyers won't go to your site, but will instead go to REALTOR.com®, so they can cross-sell to you, and so they can sell advertising to home improvement companies, moving companies, even – mind-bogglingly – cut-rate discount brokerages that undercut traditional agents.

We won't back down from this fight. A week's worth of whirlwind media coverage is the beginning, not the end of this fight. And as we've said, you, as an individual broker or agent, need to ask tough questions of your board. Have they indeed made some sort of Draconian arrangement with their MLS whereby your listing can only be shown on REALTOR.com® and not your own website? If you find this is the case, we hope and expect you'll act in the best interest of yourself as a businessperson and your home selling customers and demand it change immediately.