Who owns the data?

It was an honor to be invited to the Gathering of Eagles event put on by REAL Trends, last month in Denver. Being in the room means Hawaii Life is part of the 2016 Top 200 Real Estate Brokerages in the country. #199, to be exact. No mean feat.

The people in the room - were amazing. Captains of this industry. Innovative leaders. Everyone had an inspiring story, especially about growing their business and lessons learned along the way. It was humbling and exciting to be part of this well-heeled, super accomplished group. Not to mention it was the Gathering of Eagles 30 year anniversary and many of them had been friends for at least that long. Impressive.

Spencer Rascoff (CEO, Zillow) was a particularly smart and engaging speaker, and got me thinking about how we as an industry talk about listings, and listing data. I believe listings are a Brokerage's greatest responsibility. We don't own the real property, we are hired to represent the owners' interests and broker a sale. We don't sell the house, the seller does. So who owns the real property data, the listing data? The owner or the Broker? Or Zillow?

REAL Trends Steve Murray talks with Spencer Rascoff, Zillow CEO. 

I believe the data belongs to the property owner, not the Broker. Plenty of people (seemingly) disagree with me, given conversations about "controlling the data" I've heard over the years. From the "listing book" to the first DOS-based online MLS, to Zillow and Trulia, real estate Brokers complain at every turn that the industry hasn't been the same since "we lost control of the data." I postulate that the data never belonged to brokers in the first place, and it doesn't belong to them now.

Perhaps it boils down to semantics, but words have power, and operating in integrity means paying careful attention to the things I say. Common real estate colloquialisms can send me around the bend - of course "Buyers are liars!" We are helping them buy real property, we're not their therapists, priests or best friends. We owe our clients the duty of honesty, not the other way around. The seller owns the data and sells the property. We help the process, that's it. To me, our value is clear, simple, and real. And doesn't include the word "data."

When it comes Zillow (the current industry boogeyman) and data - they are spending Billions of dollars ($$ with a B, people) on programmers who gather information from a wide variety of public sources, compile it, and offer the consumer more accurate data online than we can provide with... well, how many Brokerages do you know that have even one programmer on payroll? (Besides yours truly, of course.) Like Brokers, Zillow is assisting the process. They don't own the data, they aren't "selling our data back to us," they are actually making our jobs easier. Zillow's data may not always be perfect, but I see it as a major benefit to the industry and to a growing real estate business in Hawaii.

Speaking of data, REAL Trends is known for it's data and analyzation services, so the statistics regarding the Top 500 Brokerages and how they performed as a group were outstanding.

Highlights of Hawaii Life's 2016 performance:

• #199 of The 500 Largest Brokers in the U.S.
• #131 of Largest Independents

2016 vs. 2015 for the REAL Trends 500, Change in sales volume:

• Top 500 cumulative: Increase 8.3%
• Hawaii Life: Increase: 18.94%

2016 vs. 2015 for the REAL Trends 500, Change in number of transactions:

• Top 500 cumulative: Increase 6.6%
• Hawaii Life Increase: 9.5%

We appreciate being recognized by REAL Trends, included as peers at the 30th Anniversary celebration and certainly look forward to future Gatherings! Mahalo nui loa.