Trulia: Violating NAR Ethics Laws?

Trulia is a great online search tool that many buyers are using to find homes in their area. I used Trulia as an agent to help promote my listings and I offer my services in answering difficult real estate questions posted in the “Trulia Voices” section. I really enjoy Trulia, although their market reports & home values are often way off, the home search tool is powerful.

That being said, I have one very large complaint about Trulia that may also put them in violation of NAR Ethics Laws. I have posted all my listing to Trulia and linked each listing to a specific information website that my broker (Crye-Leike) provides. Once I did this, I checked each listing and it was correctly linked. However, I happened to check the site again at lunch on the same day. In 2 hours, some other company had “re-linked” the listings I’M REPRESENTING to their website! What is the deal? An example of what I’m reffering to is below.

 

Why is this such a big deal? Because recomrealestate.com is not who my sellers have hired to market and sell their property! That is a firm that is submitting listings to Trulia in some type of bulk upload. This changes the listings I’m representing AWAY from a link that my sellers have approved! My sellers are paying good money to have a PROFESSIONAL represent their home and I’m sure they don’t appreciate this disservice! I’ve notified Trulia twice about this BIG mistake and have also notified them that this may violate NAR Ethics Laws as it allows the other companies to appear as if they are representing the listing, when they are not! Trulia has yet to effectively respond.

Many of the companies are not even from our area! What would “michiganhousehunting.com” know about NWA Real Estate? (They are another company that “mis-represented” my listings).

So, if you are a Realtor and have uploaded listings anywhere online… take a trip over to Trulia and see who is representing them. Even if you have never used Trulia, I bet your listings are there, being representing by a different company!

 

***UPDATE***

Current screen shot as of March 7th. 9:30 a.m.

 

***UPDATE***

Current screen shot as of March 8h. 9:00 a.m.

THANK YOU TO TRULIA & CRYE-LEIKE!

My listings have now been linked appropriately! I’m happy to report that soon after posting the blog, Trulia hopped into action and tried to get things changed. Crye-Leike noticed the post and put our Computer Wizs on it and spoke with our contact at Truia to make sure things were taken care of.

However, this is a bigger problem than me and they are looking into what is causing this on the larger scale (as pictured below).

PremierMove.com is not a brokerage in our area, but here the are listed as the link for these listings in Centerton.

Also, when you click the PremierMove.com link, it takes you to a place called ListHub with a link for more info on the property. Here is an example: http://listings.listhub.net/pages/ARMLSAR/467/532467/?channel=trulia

That MAY be ok, but I’m not sure where the information comes from or goes and I would rather chose the link and send it back to our brokerage instead of the automatically generated info.

Anyway, Thanks again to Trulia for addressing and fixing the problem. Thanks to Rudy for getting on top of it fast & thanks to Crye-Leike for taking care it for me!! Yall were all great!