Hamptons Real Estate Association's Listings Website Is Growing Quickly

When new East End real estate website HamptonsRE.com debuted in December 2019, it included rentals and sales listings from just five brokerages. In less than two months, that number has doubled.

The interest that the website has generated from both consumers and brokerages speaks to the continued viability of a venture that had been tried before without success. A major difference that sets HamptonsRE.com apart from other real estate search websites: It is the product of a nonprofit, the Hamptons Real Estate Association.

“It was only going to be successful if everyone came on,” said Robert Nelson, the president of the Hamptons Real Estate Association and an executive managing director at Brown Harris Stevens.

The five founding firms were Brown Harris Stevens, The Corcoran Group, Halstead, Sotheby’s International Realty, and Saunders & Associates. The association has since added to its ranks Douglas Elliman, Town & Country, Compass, Bespoke, and Coldwell Banker Beau Hulse Realty Group.

“It has almost every single listing,” Mr. Nelson said of HamptonsRE.com.

The hope had been “build it and they will come,” Mr. Nelson explained. “That’s why we hired Gabriels Technology, because they did such a beautiful product for The New York Times.”

Gabriels Technology Solutions built the Hamptons Real Estate Association a website that could take in all the listings feeds from each brokerage and maintain the level of detail for consumers to search and filter on HamptonsRE.com. And much of the level of detail is unique to the Hamptons, with specific search data not found in every market — like the difference between waterfront and waterview, or north of the highway and south of the highway, and a summer or winter rental period.

“They were able to handle lots of information,” Mr. Nelson said.

The website can also adapt to changes, and upgrades are continuing to make the user experience exceptional: “That’s the goal — to have a really exceptional user experience.”

Though the website is still new, Mr. Nelson reports it’s gotten results. He said he’s hearing from agents that they have been getting calls from interested customers directly through HamptonsRE.com.

One of the biggest benefits, according to Mr. Nelson, is that the listing broker is the only person whose name can be associated with a listing, so the broker, the most knowledgeable about the listing, is the point person for information regarding the property. There is no method for anyone else to buy placement of their contact information on someone else’s listing.

In the case of open listings for rentals — in which no one has an exclusive contract to find a renter and collect a commission — each brokerage listing that same address may display its own property photos and description.

Open listings for rentals are not typical; it’s not the case on the rest of Long Island and not the case in New York City, either, Mr. Nelson noted. “The big reason is, it’s always been that way.”

In addition to residential and vacation rental listings, HamptonsRE.com includes land and commercial real estate, and users may also look up brokerages and agents. As soon as users start typing what they are looking for, whether it is a property, a broker or an individual agent, suggested results begin to populate.

But the work is very satisfying now that their efforts are coming to fruition, he added.

The board includes representatives of the participating firms, with staggered terms, so everyone’s seat will not turn over at the same time.

A forerunner to the Hamptons Real Estate Association, the East End Real Estate Association, had been planning to launch a real estate listings service to compete with Hamptons Real Estate Online, known as HREO, the longtime comprehensive listings service of choice for both brokerages and consumers buying and renting on the Twin Forks.

HREO, founded in 1995, was “expensive” and “dated,” industry insiders had said at the time.

But in 2017, as the planned East End Listings Exchange was moving toward launch, Zillow Group bought HREO. The East End Real Estate Association was disbanded later that year, and the planned listings portal never came to be.

That wasn’t the only failed attempt at an HREO competitor. Back in 2008, the Hamptons and North Fork Realtors Association, known as HANFRA, planned a website designed by Rapattoni Corporation, which provides multiple listing services nationally. The plan didn’t get anywhere.

Out East Agent Tools broadly received poor reviews from real estate brokers and executives. It was that dissatisfaction that reignited interest among brokerages to create a homegrown East End listings website for consumers.

Zillow Group has updated Out East Agent Tools based on agent feedback and instituted hundreds of bug fixes since its debut last April. And in December, on the heels of the launch of HamptonsRE.com, Zillow Group announced that Out East Agent Tools would become free in 2020. Brokerages no longer have to pay $1,000 or $3,000 a month — depending on the size of the company — plus $60 per agent to get their listings on Out East.

The announcement also revealed that agents must now upload their listings to Out East if they want them to appear on the Zillow Group’s national housing search websites Zillow, Trulia and HotPads. Agents are able to upload listings to Out East even if their brokerages do not have a relationship with Out East.

“It’s been a transformative year for Out East, particularly as we look to provide better ways to support agents in this niche market, while also improving how renters and buyers find their dream East End home,” Matt Daimler, the general manager of Out East, said last week. “This shift to free listing entry for all is crucial to creating an inclusive marketplace, and we look forward to continuing to build on it in 2020. It will give more agents the ability to post listings, not just on Out East but ensures their listings will also appear across all of Zillow’s consumer websites.”

Hamptons Real Estate Association, as a nonprofit, charges brokerages that participate in HamptonsRE.com, but only enough money to cover the cost of developing, maintaining and upgrading the website. Mr. Nelson did not express concern over what impact Out East’s elimination of participation fees may have on HamptonsRE.com’s future.

“You can’t control what other people are doing — you can only control what you’re doing,” Mr. Nelson said.

And the Hamptons Real Estate Association is only concerned with what it’s doing.

“We’re just driving our car,” he said. “That’s all we can do. What they do — we have no idea. We’re just in our car, in our lane, and, hopefully, we’ll do a good job with it.”

Asked where he sees HamptonsRE.com in five years, he said he hopes that it will be the to-go place for consumers to explore and educate themselves on Hamptons real estate.

“We’re all quite excited,” Mr. Nelson added. “We hope it just keeps growing and — in this world, things change so fast now — as new things come out, we hope we’ll be there to add it, so consumers will say, ‘Wow, this is pretty cool.’”