Dear Real Estate Agents,

StreetEasy is using tactics from Economics 101:

1. Get a near-monopoly.
2. Jack up prices.

There’s just a small problem. They don’t OWN the product (the listings). YOU DO. In 2016, Zillow (StreetEasy’s parent company) received over 92% of their revenue from real estate professionals. Yes, the same people they are now screwing over.

But we should be thankful. Here’s why.

Thanks to StreetEasy’s shockingly greedy and misleading business practices in the last few months, their true colors have shown through. The real estate industry can NEVER AGAIN allow this to happen.

We need competition.

StreetEasy is dominant now, but as long as everyone does their part to empower competitors, StreetEasy’s dominance will fade over the next year. Remember, not too long ago, the New York Times was the dominant platform. While hard to imagine now, things can change quickly.

And they will.

Here are 5 Ways to Empower StreetEasy’s Competitors.  These ideas were taken mostly from ideas you put forth during discussions in the closed Facebook Group “BreakUpWithStreetEasy” (which has over 240 members! Join here )
1. SEARCH ON OTHER RENTAL AND SALE PLATFORMS.
StreetEasy has no rental listings that you shouldn’t be able to find elsewhere, especially since they lost 15,000 listings overnight on July 18th. And almost all sales listings you should be able to find through other companies like OLR or your internal databases. Find out what rental and sale portals are starting to take the new REBNY RLS feed (which started August 1st).  Your manager should have a comprehensive list and more rental and sale portals are joining each day.

2. POST ON STREETEASY ONLY WHEN YOU NEED TO.
If everyone minimizes their postings on StreetEasy, it will continue to have dramatic effects. While we know some of you have vowed to never post on StreetEasy again, sometimes we can’t do this due to client needs (the client comes first after all). However, you can still play a major part even if you are still posting some on StreetEasy.  If you simply HAVE to post on StreetEasy due to client needs, here are some tips:

  1. Consider starting off by trying another platform first and reconsider StreetEasy after a week or two
  2. If you have a lot of similar apartments (especially for rentals), consider posting just ONE of your listings on StreetEasy.
  3. Consider putting up the apartment on StreetEasy for only a limited amount of time

3. MAKE SURE EVERYONE – ESPECIALLY CLIENTS – KNOWS THAT STREETEASY NOW HAS 15,000 FEWER RENTAL LISTINGS and 4 MAJOR FIRMS ARE NOT SENDING THEM SALES LISTINGS.
Any consumer that hears this fact is stunned. 99% of consumers don’t know this yet, but every client and consumer should know this.  Put it in all of your newsletters and tell all of your friends and clients.  Consumers should know they now need to search on alternate sites like individual brokerage sites and other rental and sale platforms in order to have a comprehensive view of the market.

4. COBROKE WITH A SMILE!
Your colleague’s exclusives are posted on many other sites. Use one of them to look for any “cobroke” listings. Look, we are in this together. While cobrokes may sometimes mean less commissions, there are about 20,000 rental and sale listings in the RLS Feed so far, and that number is growing!  That is great inventory! Every time you do a deal with each other outside of the StreetEasy platform, it demonstrates that the power really is with the brokers and NOT with StreetEasy.

5. USE #NOTFOUNDONSTREETEASY.
Depending on your company’s advertising rules, one strategy some of you are employing is to write “Not found on StreetEasy” and using the hashtag #NotFoundOnStreetEasy on any listings you are advertising that are NOT on the StreetEasy platform. This advertising message will drive home the point to consumers and agents that they need to look in other places to find their home.

As always, I would love to hear any feedback. Please understand that the emergence of strong competitors won’t happen overnight, but with all of our help, it will happen much sooner than anyone expects, especially for StreetEasy.

Let’s do this!

Phil Horigan
Dedicated NYC Real Estate Agent for 13 Years
Founder, Leasebreak.com

Author

Philip Horigan is the founder of Leasebreak.com - a leading marketplace for rentals in NYC, founded in 2013. He launched Frēlē - a more comprehensive NYC rental marketplace - in May 2018 with a 4 point pledge (www.frele.com/pledge). Phil has been a New York City real estate agent for 14 years working for some of the top firms in the city. He became an independent broker in early 2017 so that he can focus more on his entrepreneurial endeavors. Phil believes strongly in building businesses in an ethical and transparent way.

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