The gathering and monetizing of property data has been attempted by Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Zillow, and many others. Each of these companies has run into the complexity of cataloging properties in local markets across the county and the amount of data to display to the public. How and when property data is displayed can pose significant risks, as a homeowner’s personal space and property details are exposed to the public without an owner’s knowledge.
Even with big data companies in the property data space, there are ways to list your home and protect your privacy and that of potential buyers.
When a homeowner decides to list their home for sale, one of the first things they do when their home hits the market is find their listing on national listing portals such as realtor.com. Then they’ll check other sites to ensure everything looks the way they want, the photos, price, number of bedrooms, etc. They want their newly listed home to show up everywhere possible, blanketing the internet, including social media, to get the most exposure.
Advertising a home for sale online as part of a home-selling marketing plan does add value. The National Association of REALTORS reported in their 2023 Profile of Homebuyers and Sellers that 41 percent of buyers start their home search using the internet before calling a real estate agent to view properties in person. However, there can be potential repercussions to a seller and potential buyer when property data is distributed to websites without data protections.
These listing portal websites use the property data for several reasons, some of which benefit themselves and not the seller. The most important thing to a home seller is to help sell an actively marketed home to potential buyers. The listing websites also want to lure web surfers and keep them on their sites going from page to page, dreaming and looking at homes when they are not considering buying a home.
According to Forbes, the average time spent on a website is 54 seconds. One large listing website reported in 2021 that their average site visitor spends six minutes and twenty-one seconds on their site, with 93 million unique visitors in 2021, when less than seven million homes were sold that year.
Property listing websites try to gain as many rights to your property data as possible. They will try to use multiple ways to obtain your data, using the source with the least protection for a property owner. Those sites also desire perpetual use of that data. When they acquire those rights, they can continually display information about a property for as long as they want, including listing photos, floor plan images, and sold price.
When most home buyers close on their new home, they don’t want their nosey co-workers looking up their new home, viewing the listing photos, and finding out how much they paid. There can also be security issues for new homeowners having what they assume is private information about their home accessible to millions of website visitors.
To ensure as much data protection as possible, sellers should consider the websites their home is listed on and ask their agents if any of their data is protected. Sellers might consider only having their listed home appear on local broker websites and the primary listing portals where specific rules are in place to safeguard listing data. This way, you can take control of your property data and ensure its protection.
New homeowners should look up their properties on the listing websites to see what information about their homes is viewable by the public when their home is “off-market.” If there is anything they want to be removed, contact the website’s support, usually by email, and ask for the data to be removed and scrubbed from their systems and algorithms.
Most sites are agreeable to a homeowner’s wishes. This way, a property owner can protect their privacy and their largest investment in their home.
Brian Toohey is the chief executive officer for the Columbia Board of REALTORS.
