Prudential gets all of Yahoo's Real Estate Traffic?

[Anthony]

I read yesterday on the Sellsius Blog, that Prudential Kicked Trulia Out of Real Estate Trade show because Trulia is in competition with Yahoo Real Estate, who is a Prudential affiliate/partner.

Yahoo's relationship with Prudential Real Estate links buyers that perform an MLS search of over 3 million homes directly to a local Prudential affiliate.

I just checked Louisville,KY and the results are redirected to: http://louisville.yahoo.idx.prupw.com

I just checked San Diego, CA and the results are redirected to:
http://yahoo.idx.prudentialcaliforniarealtyonline.com

Questions:

1. Is every Real Estate Search on Yahoo is going to Prudential?
2. Is every call us for more info on Yahoo going to Prudential?

[AnotherRE-Techie]

I read about this a month or so ago. Every property I tried in every market was directed to a Pru agent.

So, it looks like anyone searching for your property on Y-hoo is going to get the contact info of a Pru, and not you.

This is the beginning of an era where the listing agent/broker no longer "owns" his own listing. Your listing now belongs to those with enough money to buy their way to the buyers.

Or, to put it another way, the industry may be headed for a situation where there are two parties involved: all the individual listing agents, and the huge conglomerates who will disseminate the information to the buyers, and get that half of the deal.

[OCTeam]

Pru has their own e-Team that works the leads. IMO, they compete with their own agents. They also "refer" leads to agents for a hefty fee.
If it wasn't Pru, it would have been Re/Max, CB or some other brokerage that made the deal.. Yes, money talks!

[Anthony]

Edited: Who's PAYING for the relationship?

Is Yahoo charging Prudential per search, click, lead?

[svrpaul]

I've always wondered how much that is costing Prudential... I would think that it is pretty expensive.

[AnotherRE-Techie]

My understanding was that Pru "partnered" with Yahoo, and is providing the data to Yahoo. Pru gets the leads.

I doubt if Pru is paying per lead, or paying anything, for that matter. I'd bet they're doing a joint venture with Yahoo.

[judyo]

What really gets me is that Prudential isn't that popular in my area. In fact, I can't think of one Prudential company here, although there must be. But if I can't think of one it musn't be doing too much business. I was dismayed to see this last year, talk about monopoly.

Just one more reason to hate Yahoo.

[Sam Dodd]

I work for Prudential and we are 6 months into trying to get it set up and still havent seen anything. It will be interesting when they finally get it up and running. BTW this doesn't effect the ORganic seaches so it shouldnt be a big deal to anyone.

[svrpaul]

I highly doubt that Yahoo is offering this free to Prude... would you if you owned Yahoo? Offering an exclusivity to another company for free makes zero business sense and last time I checked, Yahoo was not a charity.

As for being a quality place to search for real estate, Yahoo Real Estate is certainly not one of the best places to do it. In fact, on a scale of one to ten, think zero.

[jessiesc]

I know this is an old thread but...

I would not discount Y as being Zero for searching real estate. The reason is simple: Perception.

What I mean by this is: We track our customers searches diligently. We ask everyone who calls, how they found us. 7 out of 10 times the response is: I googled.

Now this may at first seem reasonable, however when asked for what they searched, the response has been overwhelimingly: "I clicked on the Y real estate section and saw you listed there".

What many think of as G is actually not but Y or MSN instead.

While we are not affiliated with Prud, recently we have been contacted by the local office due to our internet presence knocking them down a few notches. Evidently, they don't like competition which is fine.

Prud and Y went into negotiations a few years back and made contract.

What's interesting to me is that no other major company is positioning themselves with G or MSN. Not to mention that the major franchises who could fund this type of partnership have done very little if anything to remove their advertising from Y!

Just my 2 cents worth.