StreetEasy settles Elliman dispute with a major concession

The Zillow-owned portal owned threatened to yank the brokerage’s listings last month

Douglas Elliman chairman Howard Lorber and Zillow CEO Rich Barton (Getty)
Douglas Elliman chairman Howard Lorber and Zillow CEO Rich Barton (Getty)

A dispute between New York City’s most popular listing portal and a top-producing brokerage has been settled — but not without a major concession.

StreetEasy is halting manual entry for Douglas Elliman agents and accepting the brokerage’s sales and rentals feed, according to an internal memo sent to Elliman agents on Friday. The deal marks a departure from the listings portal’s move toward manual entry, which it has argued reduces data errors.

“As of today, the listings feed between Douglas Elliman and StreetEasy is live and you will no longer have to perform any manual entry for the site,” read the memo, signed by Elliman’s New York City CEO Steven James and Hal Gavzie, who leads the region’s rental division. “Your listings will appear on StreetEasy without interruption.”

Tensions between the two companies erupted last month, when StreetEasy emailed Elliman’s nearly 2,500 New York City agents and their landlord clients, threatening to pull rental listings unless the brokerage resolved an undisclosed contract dispute with the listings giant. StreetEasy set June 19 as the deadline.

Elliman’s James and Gavzie Friday memo to agents confirmed that the firm had entered into a “mutually beneficial agreement” with StreetEasy.

“We look forward to a safe and robust return to showing, selling and leasing property on June 22,” a spokesperson for the company said in a statement, declining to comment further.

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

By signing up, you agree to TheRealDeal Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy.

Read more

Since early 2019, the Zillow-owned portal has been pushing for agents to manually enter their listing data and, earlier this year, StreetEasy stopped accepting listing feeds from brokerages.

The announcement that StreetEasy would no longer accept listing feeds drew widespread criticism from firms, which notably included Elliman. The brokerage has previously supported StreetEasy and even partnered with the portal in 2017 to build a back-end listing system for its agents.

The collaboration dissolved and the relationship between the companies has since deteriorated to the point where last December the brokerage advised its agents that it was “assessing” its use of StreetEasy and seeking “alternative marketing options.”

A spokesperson for StreetEasy declined to comment, stating that the company does not comment on or disclose contract terms.

Write to Erin Hudson at ekh@therealdeal.com