How to Maximize Real Estate Listing Syndication

They Can't Find You if You're Not There

Male using a laptop to search homes on a real estate website

YinYang / Getty Images

A real estate listing syndication is where your property ad, or listing, appears in many places at the same time, primarily all websites that are dedicated to the real estate home buying market. The concept is that no matter where the prospective buyers are looking—or which site they prefer—your listing is there. The idea is to increase exposure and shorten the time to a sale.

The real estate listing syndication is quite important to your Internet marketing strategy. For property managers, it will also impact your listing clients and your listing prospects. These clients will want to see just how much Internet exposure their homes will be getting. You may want to accent your efforts with an occasional local newspaper, but many of the eyes of buyers are on the web.

Finding the Best Sites for Real Estate Listing Syndication

As a property manager, you need to decide which sites are best for you and your clients. The generally accepted answer is "the more, the better." There are national multiple listing sites such as Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com.

Zillow wants to be the one-stop-shop for all real estate—rental, buying, selling, financing, and remodeling. Trulia assists with the home search and research process. They were acquired by Trulia in early 2015. Realtor.com displays listings from about 900 multiple listing services (MLS) across the United States. It is the most traditional of the sites, focusing on the listings.

There are also sites that are specific to a real estate agency, and to a geographic area. There may also be more specialized sites that you want to consider, such as local association MLS and local news outlets. However, there may be a few that you want to slight just because of their philosophy and marketing goals. 

For instance, if a site sells leads back to real estate agents, you may consider if you want to support their sales efforts with your listings. If you place your listing with them, and then someone inquires about the property, the site will sell me that lead back to you, on the property you listed.

There Is a Lot of Visitor Traffic

There is a lot of visitor traffic involved in these listing sites. According to data statistics company "Statista.com", as of January 2019, Zillow is the leading real estate and rental website in the United States by volume of monthly website visits. It received 36 million visits a month as of January 2019. Trulia is the second most popular real estate website with around 23 million monthly visits, and Yahoo! Homes comes in third with around 20 million monthly visits.

That's a lot of traffic. It's important that you do everything you can do to make your listing stand out, attract attention, and seduce prospective buyers.