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I think it was an inevitable and frankly smart direction to go in. I think that the advertisers are happy to post listings due to the great content and readership that Curbed has created.
@Mack- It is unfortunate that the agent you contacted new nothing about the listing or bothered to do any research. You would hope that a firm that is savvy enough to partner with Roost would hire agents that are savvy or at the least train them to handle those Roost leads in a slightly different manner than their own. To play devil's advocate here I will say that one possibility to not have individual agents be able to submit their own listings is that it would be too much work. The goal for Roost and others is to get a feed from the MLS in the area so they can aggregate and have as many listings as possible. It serves Roosts customers or viewers of their website much better if Roost has every listing instead of just a few from Savvy agents like yourself. It is a double edged sword...are the people who go onto Roost better off being answered by the listing agent who in all probability knows more about the listing or having a more complete search experience. Another thing to think about is the buyer agent relationship. By having someone work with them they are put into a buyer relationship capacity and some people may feel more comfortable being advised throughout the transaction by someone besides the listing agent. There are so many variables and things that are new going on. The one thing that we can be certain and happy about is having a platform like this and others where we can openly talk about our likes and dislikes of certain aspects of these new technologies. I would give the guys at Roost a call and see if they can explain things more clearly as I have just been guessing as to how things work over there. All in all....these are exciting times we live in.
Mack Roost has a partner agreement with that Prudential office. Being a part of your MLS you give the right to have your data displayed and exchanged in that fashion. If you like you can opt out but that defeats the whole purpose as to why you would join and use a MLS. Isn't the goal to sell the properties you are listing? If the Prudential office has someone that is interested they will be contacting you to see the listing and work in a buyers agent capacity. Shuki Haiminis
