While the debate swirls around listing syndication, one of the things that shouldn't get lost in the noise is the importance of choosing the right listing syndication technology provider. Each technology company offering listing syndication tools has a slightly different approach, and can achieve very different results. The key to making listing syndication "work" for your brokerage just might be to find a technology solution that matches your objectives. First, you need to become knowledgeable about your options.

ListHub is one of the leading listing syndication innovators in the real estate space today. Their focus is on offering advanced tracking and reporting tools to brokers, empowering them to make better syndication choices and improve outcomes for themselves and their sellers. Other companies, such as Point2 and Real Estate Digital, also have solutions that you can consider during your research. However, our review today is focused solely on ListHub, a pioneer of listing syndication services to brokers.

Key Features

Before we dig into the play-by-play of what we saw during our ListHub tour, let's go over some of the key features:

• Most of what we will cover in this review is free. Setting-up your brokerage and syndicating your listings with ListHub is entirely without charge. Only when you add in reports and other tools do fees come into play. For details on enhanced syndication features, reports, and tools that come at a price, we recommend you contact ListHub directly.
• ListHub Seller Reports is one premium product that allows brokers and agents to communicate marketing efforts to seller clients. For instance, Seller Reports clearly demonstrate to clients where their listings are appearing online, how many times the property detail page was viewed, and how many leads were generated. These reports can even aid in conversations about price changes or open houses (by revealing that leads and traffic have dropped off, for example). We'll look at these reports more closely a little later on.
  

• Broker Reports provide brokers with a wealth of data about the impact of listing syndication by publisher. This data will help not only with syndication choices but also in many other key business decisions (such as coaching, pricing, targeting neighborhoods, etc.). Broker Reports will help a broker see if more consumers are shopping at Trulia vs. Zillow vs. Homes.com or another site. Again, we're going to look at these more closely in the next section.
• ListHub provides "apples-to-apples" comparisons of the various publishers. Whereas many publishers use different definitions for the terms related to "clicks" and other metrics, ListHub has standardized all of the incoming information so what brokers see in their reports is a true, fair, and unbiased representation of how the publishers are performing.
• Broker listings are pulled directly from your MLS. Of course, the benefit of this is that the burden of entering listing information and managing data feeds does not rest on brokers (brokers who syndicate listings directly spend anywhere between $50 and $250 per month per site, so ListHub saves brokers a lot of grief and, more importantly, money). It also ensures data accuracy online, reducing tech support complaints, and possible liability for the broker.
• ListHub has recently rolled-out new functionality: Broker Ratings. These ratings come directly from the other brokers nationwide that use ListHub. This new feature has potential, as it provides an unbiased, real-world perspective on publishers from brokers just like you.
• The Lead Management settings in ListHub allow brokers to control where leads go. They can either route all leads to their own lead management system and work with them there, send all leads to the agent on the listing, or make exceptions for certain agents (so some leads are routed to the lead management system and some agents' leads are sent directly to them).
• ListHub is the first syndication solution that allows brokers to publish their listings on the Real Estate Network – a list of franchise websites that includes RE/Max.com, Century21.com, ColdwellBanker.com and RealtyExecutives.com.
• ListHub is committed to protecting the broker's data. Only the broker can select sites where listings are distributed.

Touring ListHub

The user interface of ListHub is clean, simple, and easy-to-navigate. In fact, there are just four primary tabs: e-Marketing, Marketing Choices, Inventory, and Reports. We predict that most users will spend the majority of their time in the Marketing Choices and Reports sections. We looked at Marketing Choices first. It is in this section that brokers will make their choices about the sites to which they will syndicate, research publishers, and view the publishers they are already subscribed to.

The Publisher Choices link is where brokers will make their initial selections. For brokers seeking ways to be more informed in choosing syndication sites, ListHub has provided filter options for searching publishers. For instance, brokers may only want to choose publishers that do not re-syndicate (which, as it happens, are all of the publishers on ListHub, as ListHub does not work with publishers that re-syndicate), publishers that provide metrics, etc.

When looking at individual publishers, brokers can choose from Flip-Book or Scorecard Comparison views. Many brokers will likely prefer the slick Flip-Book view as it presents the information in a very approachable format; although the Scorecard Comparison (which is essentially a spreadsheet) will appeal to some users. Whatever format you choose, this information about publishers is free to all subscribers, updated regularly, and can be an invaluable guide in making syndication choices.

From Publisher Settings, brokers can control how they would like ListHub to manage new publishers added to the roster. After all, new publishers pop-up fairly regularly, and not all brokers want to have to deal with them on a case-by-case basis. ListHub gives brokers the option (note: "OPTION" is the operative word here; we want to emphasize that this is an optional setting) to enable auto-subscribe so that new publishers meeting their criteria (for instance, only publishers who do not re-syndicate, but do provide metrics) are immediately added to their account.

As we mentioned above, the Property Reports are a key feature of ListHub. These reports are a great tool to help sellers understand traffic and leads generated across all the different sites they syndicate to. Agents can choose different designs for these reports and can send them to sellers via email (on an as-needed basis or by setting up a regular schedule).

There are reports for brokers, too. Broker Reports show activity across all listings brokerage-wide. In addition to detailing leads and traffic, activity is broken down based on a variety of factors such as geographic location, property type, price range, neighborhood, and more. Brokers can also see a breakdown of activity by agent, making these reports a valuable coaching tool.

So there you have it – a quick look at this listing syndication solution. Please keep in mind that we're just scratching the surface of the depth and breadth of functionality. We recommend that you contact ListHub for your own demo for a more complete understanding.

Next Steps

• Learn more about ListHub in our product directory or at ListHub.com.
• Explore additional options for listing syndication.