U.S. online real estate giant Zillow hopes to feature Canadian property listings on its site early in the New Year, although it says it has no plans to build a Canadian site.

Zillow spokesperson Emily Heffter confirmed the timing reported by industry publication Real Estate Magazine this week.

“We know that many buyers in the U.S. are interested in purchasing Canadian property, so we are exploring adding Canadian listings to Zillow," the company said in a statement.

"We don’t have anything to announce right now. This is just something we are exploring," it said.

The magazine quoted Zillow Goup's Vancouver-based chief industry development officer, saying that 170 million people who use the company's sites, including Zillow.com and Trulia.com, could provide valuable exposure south of the border for Canadian real estate.

Americans are the number one foreign purchasers of Canadian recreational property, according to Royal LePage.

As well as the list price of the homes on its site, Zillow provides selling price histories for the properties. That is something that Canadian real estate boards, including the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB), have been fighting to keep in the hands of real estate agents, who can disseminate it directly to their clients.

A legal decision on that dispute is expected Friday.

Rumours have been circulating for years about Zillow entering the Canadian market but, "so far it's all been rumours," said Lauren Haw, CEO of Zoocasa.com, a Canadian web-based brokerage.

But she said the latest information just means another competitor in the field: "Obviously a well-funded competitor with a lot of experience. But in our minds it's another competitor in the fold," she said.

Haw said that Zillow captures about 1 per cent of the gross national real estate commissions through advertising fees and selling leads to real estate agents.

But Canada doesn't have any "paper brokerages" that are purely listings services, she said.

In order to have access to MLS data, brokerages need to be actively listing properties and have active agents.

"Any of our competitors right now in Canada are active brokerages. But that was the case before Zillow started in the U.S. as well, so we'll see what their plan is to gain access to the boards in Canada is," said Haw.

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John Pasalis, president of Toronto's Realosophy brokerage said he would be surprised if TREB agrees to share data with Zillow, although some real estate boards might.

"Canadian realtors are a bit more serious about not sharing MLS data so I don't think TREB members would be happy about such an agreement," he said.