HouseCanary’s bold vision for its Google listings expansion 

When HouseCanary announced last month that its listings partnership with Google — which began in May as an eight-market pilot — was now expanding nationwide, many real estate professionals were left with questions.

The AI-powered real estate brokerage's chief revenue officer, Chris Rediger, offered some answers during a recent RISMedia webinar.

Bringing 'transparency to real estate': The partnership, Rediger explained, was over three years in the making. Google's objective, he said, is "to do right by the consumer and do right by its advertisers." HouseCanary's goal is to "work with every MLS" and "show every single home that's for sale."

"What we are trying to do as a company is bring transparency to real estate," Rediger said. "We think that showing our valuation where it's permissible in the Google experience does that."

How listings get on Google: Once an MLS opts in to the HouseCanary integration— as the nation's largest MLS did in June — "any broker who's a member of that MLS, their listings will show up," Rediger said. "You don't really need to do anything."

For interested brokers whose MLSs are not yet participating, Rediger said the easiest way for them to get listings on Google is to work through a national MLS, such as My State MLS, which signed on early. "You put your listings in there, and they will automatically syndicate to the feature."

Linked to ad services: Consumer search queries for homes on Google are geographic- and keyword-based, Rediger explained. The new integrated search feature, which is currently only available on mobile, "is part of Google Local Service Ads, and Google prioritizes local content above everything else."

An agent with a Google Business profile "can then advertise on Google Local Services," he said, with agents paying a per-lead fee "if you have someone contact you from the advertisement."

'Not meant to replace' other home search tools: "When you boil it down, the Google experience is very top-of-funnel. It's very early, and it's not meant to replace an in-depth home search," Rediger said, adding that portals, agent searches and other industry tools still bring "a lot of value" to the process.

The aim of the HouseCanary-Google partnership is to provide "relevant local content to the users in a comfortable and very familiar setting — and hopefully they feel comfortable communicating with agents that way too."

LLMs can't see the data: "The real estate data that we're working with Google to display is not accessible through Gemini or any large language model," Rediger said. "The data is protected, and we are contractually not allowing it to go into the LLM for training purposes or anything like that."

Are commissions impacted? Since Google isn't a licensed brokerage, "they do not have rights or entitlements to any commissions" — and Rediger doubts that will change because Google is "a large, regulated company."

"I don't think they're going to go the commission route," he said.

What about IDX compliance? Rediger said his company has spoken with MLSs that believe the Google partnership is IDX compliant. Others think it's "not quite there" and prefer using a custom contract.

HouseCanary wants "to make sure we're coloring within the lines and do right by the MLSs and the brokers who provide the data to the MLSs," he added. "We're happy to go whichever way that we're directed. And I will stay out of the fight of what is or is not IDX, because I've read a lot of IDX agreements and they all have their own special little flavor."