Master and Servant: The IDX Pullout Version

Howard Hanna's withdrawal from IDX hints at a deeper conflict brewing

In case you missed it, there was some drama on the RE.net this past weekend as people realized that Howard Hanna, seventh largest brokerage in real estate by Sales Volume with $37.7 billion, 115K transactions, and almost 12,000 agents pulled out of IDX in Northeast Ohio.

I knew about it because of this video announcement from almost two weeks ago:

But I didn’t think it was that big a deal for a variety of reasons, some of which I can’t talk about. But generally, I figured most people simply didn’t care that much about IDX.

Turns out, I was wrong. Seems that a whole lot of people care a great deal about IDX. Apparently, everyone went a bit apeshit over the weekend… and I missed all the drama because it’s quite sunny and warm here in Las Vegas and my pool is very, very blue.

Well, I just finished listening to a Twitter Spaces hosted by my podcast partner Greg Robertson. He did a great job as usual, with speakers like Sam Debord, Greg Fischer, Cole Boyer, Shaun Simpson and Dmitriy Kruglyak. You can find the recording of the Spaces here:

https://twitter.com/gregrobertson/status/1673420454399463424

I guess I do have a few thoughts now. Not about Howard Hanna’s withdrawal from IDX coupled to a direct feed to Zillow… since that’s pretty straightforward and self-explanatory. But about the reaction from the industry about that pullout.

So let’s get into it.