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

Dear Real Estate Agents,

Since my letter went out about StreetEasy’s greed (If you missed it, see here) the positive response from you has been overwhelming. We are all in agreement that we need to mobilize and fight this greedy bully. StreetEasy thinks they’re the only game in town, but they messed with the wrong agents. And it will be the agents that ultimately bring them down.

In fact, have you seen what happened? The rental listings on StreetEasy’s site declined over 50% today! The number of listings went from 30K to 15K overnight! Good work team!

So, where do we go from here? We have some ideas on how to get started. First of all, we need to have a place where we can relate and communicate with each other. From there, we come up with a more direct plan on how to stand together. Coordination is key.

With this in mind, we’ve taken two steps that we hope will mark the beginning of the end for GreedEasy:

A Closed Facebook Group for Updates and Communication with Fellow Real Estate Professionals. Join Here. 
We created a closed Facebook Group where we can all talk about what is going on and how to deal with it.  If you have any problem with access, let me know! To start things off, we are asking agents a poll question: What percent of your rental listings do you plan to keep on StreetEasy?

Follow us @dumpstreeteasy and let’s get the message out!
We’ve unleashed @dumpstreeteasy on Twitter and encourage all of you to follow and engage. The more attention and press this campaign gets, the better the chance that consumers will flock to alternate places to “search.”

StreetEasy pretends this is all “in the best interests of the consumer.” Does anyone really believe that? They are just a website. The listings are what really matter. No listings? No traffic. We think you all concur, judging by the responses like these we’ve been receiving since this campaign kicked-off:

“StreetEasy has miscalculated and I think will be worse off because of it.”

“We made them now they put the screws on us……..”

“As you well know, I was the first to leave StreetEasy about a year ago. You forget that it is also dishonest greed-the worst kind.”

“I could not agree with you more with regards to StreetEasy’s approach and deceptive practices that are being implemented at their affiliated websites as well, Zillow, Trulia, Hotpads, etc…”

“I wholeheartedly agree with all of what you say here. And can’t believe how the industry is taking it lying down.”

“Are you guys keeping the Leasebreak name if you’re planning to move to the main rental market and compete with the GodZillow monster?”

On that last comment, we will have some news on that front in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

Let’s do this!

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

Dear Real Estate Agents,

I’m sure you have the heard the news: starting soon, StreetEasy will begin charging you for every rental you post on their site. Yes, this is a gut punch in the stomach for agents who need a reliable source for leads. It is also, quite frankly, a betrayal.

While as the founder of Leasebreak I would love for leasebreak.com to be your free alternative to post and search for rentals as we already are for many agents (we moved beyond just “leasebreaks” years ago), I am writing to you now as a colleague.

Maybe it is because I have been a New York City real estate agent for many years—thirteen, to be exact. Let’s face it, it’s a brutal business, especially the rental side of the business, an area close to my heart.  Unless you have actually been in our shoes, you can’t comprehend what it takes to get a deal done from start to finish; you simply can’t empathize—and it is now perfectly clear that the executives at StreetEasy can’t either.

Thinking of leaving StreetEasy? You will survive!
Read how on breakupwithstreeteasy.com

We even wrote a “Dear Streeteasy” letter to sum up our feelings. ?

StreetEasy became the market leader by convincing all of the brokerage firms to post their listings on their website. To accomplish this, they deceived brokers in three ways:

First, they indicated that they would only accept listings from brokers.  But then they surprised agents by allowing landlords and tenants to post on their site.

Second, they assured you all leads from your listings would go directly to you.  StreetEasy’s new “Premier Agent” program abruptly ended that commitment.

Finally, they led you to believe it would always be free to post listings on their site. Yet now by charging all rental agents to post their listings, the deception has reached new heights.

One thing I want to make crystal clear: Leasebreak’s goal is not to become the next StreetEasy. The real estate community should never find itself in this predicament again: one firm or source that is relied upon too much, possessing too much market power, and justifying reprehensible business decisions which harm the community who, ironically, helped create it.

This is why Leasebreak wholeheartedly supports REBNY’s effort to once and for all provide a true MLS in New York City. Real estate agents need this to be protected from a greedy juggernaut like StreetEasy.

I hope that you will come to see Leasebreak’s rental marketplace as a free alternative. You already know that Leasebreak is the clear leader in finding shorter term furnished and unfurnished rentals between one and twelve months online, but did you know:

• Many 12 month listings are also posted on Leasebreak by agents, tenants breaking their lease, and condo/coop owners.

• Agents can post listings and get leads for free. They can also search listings for free.

• We host properties not listed anywhere else. Since our marketplace is free to list, many who post on Leasebreak are from owners and tenants who don’t want to pay the $125 to post on StreetEasy. (Who can blame them?!).

• We have a special program where agents can get exclusive rental listings or work with renters. Over 250 agents are in the program as of today, and they love it.

• We have “shares” or “rooms for rent”.  While most agents don’t “work” these type of clients, many still refer their clients to a transparent, professional real estate website for these types of apartments.

We look forward to seeing you on Leasebreak.com. And please, don’t hesitate to respond and ask me any questions. Hope to hear from you soon!

Sincerely,

Phil Horigan,
Founder, Leasebreak