Kirby Slunaker, CEO of Denver Metrolist found out first hand how hard it is to get a local real estate agent that specializes in the area when he was searching for a home on Zillow.

Larry Hotz posted an article of an interview he did with the CEO and it appears that the Denver Metrolist will start delaying listing syndication to Trulia, Zillow and even Realtor.com in the near future.

I talk to agents all the time that are frustrated with having to compete with the big portals for their listings. At 7:50 into the interview Kirby made a very good point about having to compete for your listing that you’ve worked hard for, possibly even negotiating reduced commission or agreement to a large ad spend or photo package only to have to compete for the lead from a premier agent buying space on one of these portals.

I know in our small area here in Southern Colorado many time listings in the Pueblo area will show an agent out of the Colorado Springs marketplace. Those agents in Colorado Springs most often have no clue about the local area and most of the agents that show up aren’t even member of the local Pueblo board.

I’ve never been a fan of syndication but there are ways to capture leads from these portals without having to pay for their service.

I’ve noticed a trend happening where prospects are obviously sitting in front of homes and the first thing they do is type in the address to find more information. Often times these large portals come up first. We’ve designed our real estate websites to compete with this however and are seeing success where our clients listings are beating out the major portals. See this blog post Fully Indexable IDX Systems for more information.

Will the listing syndication debate continue? For sure. Will agents and brokerages ever wake up to the fact that listing syndication is taking money out of their pockets and causing undue grief and do something about it? Maybe.