Look Who’s Coming for Home Seller Information: Google Expands Real Estate Listings in Search.

There’s some big news out there, involving how we all search for homes. Google real estate listings are back. You might see them if you use Google Search on your phone.

After an eight-market pilot, Google and HouseCanary are expanding home listings in mobile search across the United States. It shows listings for greater San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, as well as greater New York, Miami, Austin, Chicago, and Cleveland.

The listing experience is powered through HouseCanary’s ComeHome platform. HouseCanary, which owns ComeHome, is a high-tech real estate brokerage. It is licensed to do business as a brokerage in every U.S. state.

For a potential home buyer, the Google and HouseCanary feature offers convenience. Listings come into view complete with “request a tour” buttons.

Follow the Money? Realities That Agents Must Ponder

Members of specific Multiple Listing Services can opt in to share listings through ComeHome for possible inclusion in the Google test. This means the number of total listings available through Google’s search engine depends on the real estate professionals who choose to populate the test with local information. The pilot search feature, then, isn’t comprehensive. As it stands now, it can’t replace the data services that agents currently use.

Presumably, as more listing services and more agents opt in, the search will become robust, and spread to more cities and towns. We may soon be able to pick up a phone anywhere in the country and browse for listings, see the home descriptions, interior and outdoor visuals, and set up a tour—all on the ComeHome platform.

Now, agents must consider the pros and cons of sharing their listings with the mobile service. Is this a good idea?

The agents who opt in get the benefit of having the pilot search feature work for them at no charge. HouseCanary says the pilot is free for contributors. Search results will credit the agents who contribute active listings. Potential clients will be able to click to contact the contributing agent. And the agent won’t be charged for these potential customers’ visits to their sites. So far, so good for agents.

That said, there are points to ponder before diving in.

When massive tech companies, including Google, put themselves on the path between hopeful buyers and the mortgage process, what are the long-term ramifications? Data can be monetized, and money is power. This is a special risk for small brokers and independent agents who cannot keep up with tech companies that might be motivated to redirect leads. Should these agents feed this dynamic?

To quote HousingWire:

HouseCanary runs a separate business selling property data to, in its own words, “ten of the top buyers of residential loans on Wall Street, six of the top mortgage lenders and seven of the top single-family housing REIT operators.”

Here’s what that means, according to HousingWire. The agents give their listings away, to a competing brokerage. That valuable information now belongs to “a company that sells to Wall Street, and out onto Google.”

Wall Street Finds Another Way to Get Our Goat? Say It’s Not So

Well, ultimately there are some questions here for the ordinary deed seeker or small business. Here’s the context, broken down:

• Wall Street companies can purchase data from HouseCanary. Could be another layer of leverage for the large corporations that buy up houses in a number of U.S. regions? These companies have already proven challenging for hopeful home buyers and also for small brokerages.

• Small brokers and agents who opt in will be building another company’s store of data, too—as HousingWire pointed out. Remember that the company that owns the platform is a licensed broker—in every state.

By now, we all know that tech companies have a great deal of leverage once they amass access to large sources of data. Someone who’s looking for a home might go right to a search engine and find listings rather than look up an online brokerage, or a local real estate agent’s site. That could be hard on small, local real estate companies.

Tech companies are known to charge businesses for visibility online and for connections to potential customers. And it’s not hard to imagine a tech company updating its terms and introducing charges later on. Can anyone guarantee any tech platform’s service will stay subscription-free?

Should Multiple Listing Services Agree to Participate?  

Late last year, the Alphabet (Google) company began testing out listings in searches. Questions came up immediately. Who has rights to listing data? How would Google harvest the data and who should be asked for permission? Will the Multiple Listing Services (MLS) be making decisions that take leverage away from the ordinary agent or broker?

According to HouseCanary, all applicable MLS rules are being followed in the Google partnership. But brokerages are sure to question HouseCanary’s role—as a brokerage that could ultimately be in the position to sell agents’ own information back to them.

This all brings up the changes listing services are experiencing. In the wake of the National Association of REALTORS® commission settlement agreement, the MLS is going through a time of turbulence. The listing services are now looking at collaborations with technology companies, as competition for listing data increases.

The real estate podcaster Mike DelPrete took note early on. “There are a lot of potential implications here, from the incumbent portals to exclusive listings to AI and international,” DelPrete mused after spotting the test through Google. Other media outlets soon picked up the story. Concerns arose over the ability of tech companies to control brokerage data.

HouseCanary got on social media to defend its new platform.

Now, with eight major cities included in the searches, the new platform looks poised for serious expansion.

Sides Will Be Taken. We’ll Keep Deeds.com Readers Apprised

So, what’s next in the online listing contests? And when does the Google pilot run end and a nationwide data engine appear? We don’t know. But here’s what’s obvious so far.

We see listing networks run by big brokerages; and, now, web portals that want to be a store of data for all homes for sale. This sets up clashes ahead between big real estate companies and big tech.

Will listing data turn into batches of assets that big companies acquire and transfer to other companies, rerouting the home searchers as they go? As the story continues, governments will likely come under more pressure to regulate U.S. real estate in a way they’ve never done before.