Homes.com to take REBNY feed amid StreetEasy dispute

A second national listings portal has inked a deal to accept listings directly from the Real Estate Board of New York amid the bitter dustup between the city’s top brokers and StreetEasy.

Homes.com, which claims 14 million monthly visitors, will display listings from REBNY’s new residential listing service starting Thursday, joining Realtor.com, which said it would accept the RLS feed earlier this week. StreetEasy, which began charging rental agents $3 per day to post listings, has refused to accept the feed.

“Our thought is that the highest-quality listing data comes direct from the multiple listing service,” said Andy Woolley, Homes.com’s vice president of industry development. “In this case, the brokers in New York Have Designated Rebny As The Place that has the most accurate and updated listing information.”

Virginia-based Homes.com has around 3 million listings nationwide, but has a limited presence in New York City, where a search for sales listings yielded 4,250 results on Wednesday. Woolley said accepting the RLS was a “significant step” toward increasing the company’s reach here.

StreetEasy — which claims 5 million visits to rental listings and 5 million visits to sales listings — said it won’t take the RLS feed because doing so would compromise the accuracy of listings data. In response, at least 10 firms said they will send listings just to the RLS and cut StreetEasy out. Still, StreetEasy had north of 11,900 sales listings on Wednesday.

In addition to Realtor.com and Homes.com, the RLS funnels listings to aggregators through two administrative hubs: Bridge Interactive’s Cheque platform (which is owned by Zillow Group) and Listhub.com (which is owned by News Corp.).

New York City-based sites that have signed on to accept the RLS feed include RentHop, LeaseBreak, LeaseHop and Whichdoor, which closed an $8 million Series A financing round last week for a total of $11 million in funding.