I’m with Joel in wondering what…
..MicroHoo would mean for online real estate… (and especially for Move who did not renew the contracts to run the listings behind AOL Real Estate AND Yahoo Rentals last year).
My guess is that it would be a good thing for Move as it would provide at least another year of breathing space while senior execs at MicroHoo focused on trying to synergize their future online ad platforms.
On a REAL wild speculation… I think best thing this combined MicroHoo could do in the real estate space is would be to write a big paycheck to one of the big players (probably Zillow, but even Trulia or Move) and let them worry about real estate while MicroHoo sorts everything else out! 
About the Author: Dustin Luther
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I can’t help but wonder what that will do for Prudential. Will they still come up first because of their strategic partnership with yahoo?
That is one reason I personally don’t use yahoo that much or tell clients to search there.
Hi Missy, Brian here from Yahoo!. While Prudential has been and will remain a key partner for Yahoo! Real Estate, we do allow brokers and franchisors nationwide to post listings on our site for free. Any brokerage can submit their listings to us in order to reach our millions of monthly users. You can read more in last month’s press release here: http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=286135
Brian,
I tried searching around the site a bit, but I’m having trouble confirming something…
Does this change mean that you guys are still showing all the MLS listings (via a Prudential IDX feed), but giving preference to the local brokers (over Prudential), when they have uploaded their listings, or are you now ONLY displaying listings from brokers when they have giving you a feed?
Dustin,
The default search experience on Yahoo! Real Estate (‘Homes for Sale’ radio button) points to our Yahoo!-hosted listings database that is open to all brokers/franchisors.
We have a separate ‘MLS Listings’ radio button that allows our users to continue to search MLS listings in all major markets via Prudential’s IDX site.
Fascinating…
My guess is that most consumers wouldn’t get that distinction in that they probably don’t even know what “MLS” stands for… and myself, once I saw “homes for sale”, I never would have thought to look elsewhere for the “comprehensive” list of homes for sale.
[...] 4, 2008 by Dustin As Brian pointed out, Yahoo Real Estate currently returns broker-uploaded listings by default, but also gives consumers [...]
[...] 4, 2008 by Dustin …their combined real estate vertical to one of the big players in the space: “And the Microsoft-Yahoo! combo needs to make sure [...]