Real estate social media site Activerain recently announced some new features that they are making available through a subsidiary called Realtysoft. Essentially, Activerain is gathering MLS IDX feeds from across the United States and Canada, and providing the repackaged data back to real estate agents for use on their websites, blogs, etc. This service is currently being provided “free”.
This is likely to be a limited time offer – as Activerain is in the profit generation business (as is any company of course). It remains to be seen how Activerain intends to turn a profit (or benefit) from providing this service. There are a variety of profit models that they could utilize. Some possibilities include:
Selling of ad space – most likely to real estate agents
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Exportation of the MLS IDX data to another site that they own (similar to what they did with Localism) – followed by charging of agents for being the “local expert”
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Combining the MLS IDX data feeds from the various regional MLS systems – into a national listing aggregation site ala Realtor.com – and then either selling featured ad space, or even charging referral fees to real estate agents for leads generated through the national site
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Charging agents annual/monthlydues for the use of the service
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etc
The list goes on and on with the possibilities. Once Activerain gathers sufficient MLS IDX feeds from across North America – the field is really wide open for how they intend to generate revenue from its use.
The most likely route of course is to charge real estate agents in some form or fashion. Whether it be straight forward on the front end (monthly fees), or somewhere on the back end (referral fees for leads, or featured ad space), real estate agents are the most likely candidates to be the profit generator for Activerain.
[Side note: which is somewhat ironic I think....real estate agents give away something to Activerain for basically free, and then Activerain takes what was given to them, repackages/markets it and then charges the very real estate agents to make a profit, what was given to them in the first place. Really doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me from a real estate agent perspective, but anyway...] Charlotte’s Web ipod Big Fish release
Currently, Activerain has IDX feeds from local MLS systems in the following states:
Alaska, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin - and Ontario Canada
They have announced that COMING SOON, they will have the following additional states:
Alabama, Deleware, Iowa, Kentucky, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington – and Alberta Canada
No one has any problems with AR making money, but as you said, to charge the agents for leads that used to come to them through their own writing has caused a bit of dissent among the members. If AR goes to charging people to use what was free, I think many will leave as it will be another Realtor.com but with the Members supplying the work, and paying to do it.
I am the CEO of ActiveRain and we are a HUGE company so I sometimes forget about some of our subsidiaries but I don’t believe we own a “Realtysoft”; let me check. Yep pretty sure I know nothing about Realtysoft.
(I was kidding about the huge company part – we only have 9 employees in our conglomerate)
Jon:
Are you a member of ActiveRain? If you were, you would know that RealtySoft is simply one of our advertisers, NOT a subsidiary of ActiveRain. They are offering free IDX feeds/landing pages, but it’s not through us.
Also, we recently launched a new feature/tool for our members called ‘Listing Router’ that allows them to effectively ‘capture’ consumer clicks, and direct them straight to their own IDX landing page.
In the future, if you want to offer up seemingly ‘investigative’ style articles about ActiveRain, just give me a call. I would glad to give you facts.
I started to comment here and then noticed Rich’s comment above, thanks for setting the record straight Rich.
There have been 2 “anonymous” comments to this post. Folks use your real name and a real address and not a proxy or don’t comment. That’s our policy here going forward.
All comments on this site are moderated.
I left a comment at 2:40pm today, before both Rich and Brad’s comment, and yet you still have it in moderation lock down. Nice. If you doubt the authenticity send me an email and I will respond.
Jonathan- you have my humble apologies. I did not see the comment hit with all of the other emails. It was entirely unintentional. My bad…it is approved.
Jonathan, Brad and Rich,
Thanks for setting the record straight. For a moment I thought maybe ActiveRain has taken over our company (RealtySoft) and maybe I don’t know about it
ActiveRain is definitely a great company to work with, its been a pleasure working with you folks.
Wish you all the best.
Peyman Aleagha
President
It doesn’t seem fair to me that they take the data that we provide and then charge us for ad space right next to that same data that consumers find before our own sites.