This is DEFINITELY something to think about. And I have thought of it before but not this much. My head hurts now. Makes me want to consider building my site so people have to sign in to see what I have.

As a homeseller, why would I NOT want my house promoted and marketed as widely as possible? If someone in Charleston SC is thinking of moving to Phoenix, I WANT him to be able to be visible to him with a little effort on his part as possible.

When you say, “I pay heavily each year to have showcase listings, which basically means that my listings that show up there will not embarrass me when my clients check to see what they look like”, frankly I’m insulted. I would hope you would be doing that to raise my home’s visibility.

Why would you NOT want information about your client’s home to be disseminated as widely as possible and to show up in as many places as possible?

I am a homeseller right how and I can tell you that you have value to me in three areas:
1. Your knowledge of the neightborhood that allows you to accurately set the selling price
2. Promoting and marketing my home, getting it in front of as many eyeballs as possible.
3. Using your experience to guide me through the sold-to-close phase

From the perspective of the homebuyer: you gotta disconnect the ‘register to see the data’ from ‘a lead who may be a homebuyer’. I HATE the fact that sites make me register. I HATE the fact that the listings seem scattered hither-and-yon.

Once I have found a small number of properties I am interested in THEN I am going to find a Realtor that I feel I can trust, one that I have connected with and feel comfortable doing business with. Making me register – or even having listings on your site – is not going to give me that feeling of trust.

Brian-
I have to respectfully disagree w/ you on this issue. Since real estate agents are paid by sellers, I have to ask the same question Dave asked — why would you not want a clients listing disseminated as widely as possible? The whole point is to sell the home — and not all home buyers look at the same web sites, which means homes not disseminated widely are less likely to be sold. It shouldn’t matter where a home buyer finds a home, just THAT they find it.

Dave,
I think we are actually on the same side of this. I agree that an agent should work in his client’s best interest by trying to maximize the exposure of a listing. I also agree with you that there are too many listing sites right now and adding your listing to all of them probably a diminishing rate of return. It is probably more effective to selectively syndicate your listings to the most effective places for your specific market – and it does differ by market.

I say that we are on the same side of this argument, because as it is now, (with MLS listings not accessible to those who are not local agnets) agents can still easily syndicate listings to many, many places to increase exposure. I am not arguing against this.

I am questioning the merits of allowing national portals easy access to MLS listing data which I think would only aggreviate the problem of having listings scattered all across the internet. Imagine how the first problem that you raised would be excasserbated if everyone had the ability to display MLS listings.

I agree that forced registrations are annoying; I also do not like having to register on a page to access information. However, if I think the information is valuable enough to me, then I will register. If not, I move on.

Think of it this way… you are a home seller who hired an agent to sell his home. Would you rather have your agent:

1. put your house out there to be looked at by 100 people who he has no way to contact and explain why your home is a great buy, or

2. put your house out there to be looked at by 10 people who he can follow up with and try to show your home to?

You could prefer the first and I am sure you can find plenty of professional and competent agents who will do that for you. From my personal experience, the second option is far more effective in converting web marketing to offers.

Brian-
Regarding this quote –
“put your house out there to be looked at by 100 people who he has no way to contact and explain why your home is a great buy”

For the seller, it probably is ideal to have thier agent contacting everyone who looks at their home, but not ideal for the consumer viewing the homes. I think the consumer wants to be, and should be, in control as to whether or not they contact the listing agent to ask additional questions about the home they are viewing online.

” Think of it this way… you are a home seller who hired an agent to sell his home. Would you rather have your agent:

1. put your house out there to be looked at by 100 people who he has no way to contact and explain why your home is a great buy, or

2. put your house out there to be looked at by 10 people who he can follow up with and try to show your home to?”

I want to get my sellers home in front of as many eyes as possible. My goal isn’t to double-side the transaction. (In fact, I despise dual agency). I want the house sold and I don’t care who the buyer’s agent is. A *lot* of buyers look for homes on the internet, including many who already have an agent.

I put my clients listings on every site I can. I let people search all the Phoenix area listings on my site with absolutely zero registration. If/when they are ready to secure an agent, some will call, and some won’t.

Brian,

Excellent analysis of the situation and I acknowledge your perspective. I agree with some of your points but I have a slightly different outlook.

As an IT director for a local realtor association often times I am forced to examine issues from two sides first is the smaller broker offices and second is the larger broker offices.

From the larger broker office perspective there are some excellent advantages to data standardization.

Many of the larger broker offices have to tie together feeds from across large geographic areas (a local Coldwell banker office for instance manages over 22 feeds) if those feeds are all (as they are) different the overhead to maintain the site can get very complex. Large brokerages also often have specialized tools for reporting statistical data or doing CMAs data standardization would make the deployment and utility of these tools much more effective.

As a smaller broker office there are advantages as well.

Smaller broker offices enjoy some advantages in the market that larger broker offices do not. They are more agile and adaptable to change but many times they lack the resources to commit to change. Data standardization would allow smaller broker offices to develop similar in house tools to larger broker offices. It would also allow companies to enter the market and offer solutions that they might not have been able to offer and at a lower cost. For instance you might have a great IDX site but what if you wanted an IDX powered Map site then you would either have hire someone to create it or do it yourself. By having a defined data standard you increase the competition among the third party providers and widen the options available to you to select from.

As a consumer the benefits to a standardized set of data is not readily apparent. The primary benefit I believe is that if we standardize the data we increase the relevancy of the information they are using. In larger data aggregation sites such as REALTOR.com decisions have to be made about which fields to include; by standardizing the data offered you make it possible for these sites to more quickly add fields and keep their services inline with what the marketplace is demanding.

Access to MLS data from out of area can bring big benefits depending on the market you work in.

Here in California a growing percentage of transactions are occurring between market areas; people moving from northern to southern California and vice versa. We also have a healthy amount of traffic from out of state, for instance in our MLS we listings from Reno and Tahoe which are popular summer and vacation residencies. I agree with you though not every market has the exact same needs. I also believe you can standardize your data without distributing it to the National Market and ultimately by doing so you position yourself well should you decide to go that route.

Data standardization for the association and the MLS provider introduces some excellent benefits.

From my vantage I believe that once the data is standardized it can then be aggregated and examined for compliance before being distributed to third party providers and the myriad of IDX sites in your local market. By examining the data before it is distributed to the marketplace you increase the data’s reliability.

Also in the model described above you as the broker have the ultimate decision where your data ends up, if you don’t like Google or Trulia then you don’t have to aggregate to them if you do wish to aggregate to them then you are able to. This is nothing new by the way the National Listing Service from Point2 is leading the way in developing the model described.

Ultimately all your points lead to one conclusion as data providers we have to begin securing where your data ends up and who has the access to your data. By setting the data standard and by opening the access to only those persons or parties which are going to develop products that will benefit the REALTOR community and enhance the REALTOR brand then we can pull the teeth from tools which seek to detract from the value that working with a REALTOR brings.

Excellent article Brian I believe this exactly the conversation the RE.net needs to have.

Jay,
I agree with you that dual agency is a bad thing. It is no longer legal in Colorado so I do not know too much about it.

I think the premise of your argument is wrong because it is not about “double-endng” deals. Real estate brokers go to only one place to search for homes to show their buyers: their local MLS. They do not go to Trulia, Edgeio, or anything like that because they do not need to.

The local MLS offers the largest inventory of available properties, the most accurate and verifiable information on properties, a built-in broker compensation contract, and safeguards if someone adds misleading information. The point is that to make your listing available to all the brokers out there who have qualified buyers who may buy it, you only have to list it on the MLS.

The purpose of syndicating that listing to other websites is not to provide more exposure to real estate brokers but to provide more exposure to home buyers doing their own research. In fact, many home buyers online do have a broker they are working with but use the internet to search in addition to what the broker is showing them. If they find a home they like, they will then email it to their broker who will setup the showing.

I just wanted to clarify this so you do not automatically assume that a broker with a registration-required IDX system is restricting access to the information out of the sole hope of procuring the sale independently.

[…] Brian Wilson, Challenging the MLS Data Access Assumption […]

[…] the Case for Data Standardization Add Brian Wilson over at the Geek Estate Blog has posted an excellent article about Data Standardization. I would encourage everyone to take a few minutes and read it. Brian raises some very valid points […]

Brian, thank you for your positive comments about the FBS Blog and thank you more for fostering the discussion of this topic, which I think is or should be front and center for agents, brokers, MLSs, Associations, and even the DOJ and others who desire change in the current practices.

One of the reasons for the questtion in my post is I wonder if there is some middle ground between unfettered syndication and the current walled garden approach of many MLSs? I thought Google’s terms of use were particularly interesting because many in the web 2.0 movement seem to take for granted that somehoe Google are the “good guys” making everything so easy and then, at least in the RE.net, compare them to the MLS, which supposedly make things so difficult. The reality is that Google’s terms of use protect their interests at least as much as the MLS has protected the interests of brokers and agents by providing some restrictions on how and when MLS data can be distributed. The primary difference is that everyone just ignores the terms of use from Google and that makes it seem free when it really isn’t. There is no free lunch.

As the comments to your post point out, I think it is important to isolate the many issues involved in this dicsussion. For example, syndication is not standardization. They are related but not the same thing. As Mark Flavin points out, few would argue that standardization is a good thing. On the other hand, syndication (the broad dissemination of standard or other listings) has many pros and cons. Syndication also is not advertising. Again, they are related but not the same.

Advertising is the choice of the seller in agreement with their agent and broker. This is the way it always has been and, for antitrust and free market reasons, how it likely will remain. As Jay Thompson points out, if the seller wants their listing advertised everywhere, then they should hire an agent and broker who will do that for them. On the other hand, there are plenty of sellers who do not want that. Good examples are very high-end sellers who want some exclusivity. Or those bothered by the mixture of content on sites like Craigslist. Regardless, the advertising strategy is something that is and should be controlled by the listing agreement between the broker and seller.

But here’s where the rubber hits the road. I’ve been suggesting for awhile on the FBS Blog that the free choice of sellers and brokers is not in the consumer’s best interest. Why? Because free choice and competition means the listings will not get aggregated for the consumer in any one place. Yet consumers don’t want to search many sites, they want to search one. They want to be confident they are seeing the entire inventory.

This is the value the MLS has brought to consumers for years, before the web and now with the web. There are literally thousands of sites with the MLS listing invetory fully available. IDX is a widely used syndication policy and now RETS (the Real Estate Transaction Standard) is making that syndication even easier, and an enormous amount of work is going on by many in the RETS community to make it even easier.

So the technology is getting easier, but my concern is that the conversation raised in your post has been shut down by the NAR/DOJ litigation and usurped by the web 2.0 entrants. Now the conversation is confusing Trulia, Point, Google Base, Zillow and others with the MLS, when, in fact, the MLS isn’t technology at all but a process by which competitors have agreed to cooperate with each for the good of all involved in the transaction.

The conversation that must occur is how that cooperation can be preserved in the changing face of advertising on the web. Can terms of use for MLS data be crafted that distinguish between advertising the listing and advertising other products? Like Google requires, couldn’t brokers and agents require that the sites hosting the listings have some purpose (or value add) other than just reposting the listing data? In other words, a site can’t make its living just off the listing information, which might stop lead generation companies, a primary concern of those requiring the opt-out objected to by the DOJ.

What other terms of use are necessary to make syndication beneficial to the brokers and agents? That’s the conversation that should be had, for there would be many benefits of broader and easier syndication. First and foremost, the benefits would be broader and faster innovation, things we can’t even imagine today. Let’s just say a feed was created with address, lat/long, list price, sale price, begin date, and sold date. With that minimal data, which (except for non-diclosure states) arguably is all public anyway, we’d likely see some incredibly cool statistical analyses that would help many understand the market better, including agents and brokers. But what are the terms of use on which this data should be provided?

I’m going on too long for a comment (sorry) but here’s a conclusion to keep the conversation going:

How about if the MLSs across the country created a site like MLS.ca in Canada, which contains all the MLS inventory free of all advertising. Then, the MLS could make key, non-confidential data available for broad syndication while prohibiting use of the data for advertising. In other words, get the data on a single web site to benefit consumers and syndicate the data to foster innovation.

This is just one idea. There are many others. The best idea, though, is to elevate this discussion to a fevered pitch with as many involved as possible, clashing to create the best ideas.

Brian

I’ve re-read this post and don’t think you’ve made a case against having your listings distributed.
1) The fear that leads be sold back to you by listing agregators is entirely unfounded. I can’t think of a single listing agregator that refuses to post the listing agent or brokerages contact details. Can you?
2) Your other reason is not to allow the agregator to develop a relationship with the customer. Think this through some more. Firstly I’m unsure why you consider this is a problem when you don’t monetize web traffic or want to own both sides. More importantly though; you’re missing the fact that removing agregators doesn’t garuantee you customer attention – and in fact makes your competitors website more attractive to customers. You’re better off having the customer start their search via a neutral 3rd party than on the site of the broker down the street. Removing neutral media companies from the RE sales process would be a one way street to a single franchise monopoly.

If these are the only reasons cited for not distributing listings then I say “take down the walls.” I a’m surprised you dont see the benefit to your clients and theirs of distributing listings online. It’s free advertising. I cant agree that “dont advertise” is good advice.

Brian I am sorry if I confused the issue with my focusing on data standardization.

Michael I think MLS.ca is exactly where we need to be heading with this conversation. The truth of the issue is that in the near future there may not be an opportunity to have this discussion.

As you said people are confused with what an MLS is and its purpose. Ultimately deciding to set a broad data sharing standard benefits everyone in the RE community.

As more and more offices enter into individual data sharing agreements with aggregators the window closes.

Hey, I now see in my comment above that I said “few would argue that standardization is a good thing.” I meant few would argue that standardization is NOT a good thing. I could blame it on this being Sunday when I should be resting or my writing the comment riding in the car on my way home from a weekend with my in-laws with the sun blazing away on my screen making it nearly impossible to see, but that would all be lame. 😉

To David G.

You say: “The fear that leads be sold back to you by listing agregators is entirely unfounded. I can’t think of a single listing agregator that refuses to post the listing agent or brokerages contact details. Can you?”

While most listing agregator’s have been shut down or threatened with a lawsuit to stop scraping MLS’s without permission, there are other financial agreements between parties that is problematic.

For instance, the financial agreement between Yahoo and Prudential allows anyone searching for real estate on Yahoo to be directed to an IDX feed from Prudential. Instead of the listing agent receiving an inquiry on their property, an agent from Prudential receives all the leads and inquiries, effectively cutting out the listing agent.

Also, companies like Estately use their IDX feed to attract buyers. When a buyer inquires about a property, they’re not directed to the listing agent. That Buyer’s contact info is “sold” to an agent for a referral fee. Same for RealEstate.com and dozens of smaller sites around the country.

[…] brain on some of the pertinent issues. Michael Wurzer’s thoughts, most recently this post, a timely GeekEstate post and a few other sources have contributed. Frustratingly, relatively little has been written in the […]

Hi Marlow –

Great examples and as always the devil’s in the details.

No one is advocating for scraping. The Pru/Yhoo example in fact proves the point that without freely syndicated listings, monopolies will thrive. If all listings were freely syndicated (with listing agent details) there wouldn’t be a need for these types of partnerships.

I checked out Estately and I am frankly shocked that the listing’s brokerage and agent contact details are no-where to be found. This is definitely not the model I’d recommend for freely syndicating listings. It’s beyond me why an MLS would allow for partial listings to be published. In today’s era of information transparency this practice will result in owners being harassed by buyers who reverse look up their contact details. It’s a dangerous practice that could easily cause buyers and sellers to bypass all service providers if it’s allowed to continue.

Both examples demonstrate how listing agents are being disintermediated due to a lack of clear policies and open syndication of listing content. I’m convinced the best solution to these problems is to freely syndicate listings with rules for including listing agent and brokerage attribution.

Thanks again – you always make me think!

I just noticed this fineprint in the footer at Estately and figured out how they do it; “This listing appears courtesy of the NWMLS and The Landmark Group.” The Landmark Group is the broker and the name in the footer changes dynamically as you browse listings. Very slick – it’s the first dynamic disclaimer I’ve ever seen. I wonder if NWMLS will close this loophole but I suspect that they can’t. Clever Galen, very clever.

[…] GeekEstate blog has an interesting post by Brian Wilson on never ending MLS data access debate. Brian doesn’t see value in opening up the listing data to syndication: I can understand how […]

[…] few days ago Brian Wilson over at the Geek Estate Blog posted an excellent article about Listing Syndication, this prompted me to write a post about Data Standardization because in my crazy way of viewing the […]

I acknowledge your perspective, but listing inventory is not what I “sell” as a broker. I want the widest possible exposure to buyers for all my seller’s properties and I want to be of assistance to as many buyers who choose to work with a broker as feasible.

For too many years, we have tried to lockup our inventory with the MLS playing gatekeeper. My target/goal is to market a positive experience, not a specific listing which I or my MLS have to be the gatekeeper for. For that reason I embrace Zillow, Trulia and other platforms.

David,

Estately “gets around this” by being an actual brokerage. They’re acting just as Windermere or John L. Scott or any other brokerage is by becoming a member of the MLS and using their feed for listings. The difference is that, instead of having their own office of agents, they refer the leads out, saving themselves the overhead and hassle of managing dozens of real estate agents. I do the same thing with leads from my site, as I can’t possibly service all those clients.

This is not a “loophole” that Galen has exploited… if you look closely at the listings featured on my site or any other NWMLS brokerage, they all say “This listing appears courtesy of….” However, my photo and contact info is displayed prominently on each listing, as allowed by the NWMLS.

It’s a beautiful thing…… 🙂

Regarding

1. put your house out there to be looked at by 100 people who he has no way to contact and explain why your home is a great buy, or

2. put your house out there to be looked at by 10 people who he can follow up with and try to show your home to?

What is wrong with doing both #1 and #2 at the same time? There is always a significant chance for one of the 100s from #1 to become part of the 10s in #2. And #1 doesn’t prevent #2 from happening.

[…] blog has written a post that follows thread of conversation that Michael over FBS Blog began, Brian at Geekestate continued. I am glad to hear that at the national level there is serious consideration given to the concerns […]

[…] 15, 2007 Cue up the Ennio Morricone music and head for the hills! There’s been some recent talking among the town folk, about the feeding frenzy that’s happening out there on the wild web of […]

[…] here to read Author Comments […]

While real estate brokers grapple with the parochial issues – both practical and legal – consumer demand continues to grow for more and more real estate information with listing data. If brokers wish to remain at the forefront of consumer awareness and the existing MLS system has any hopes of surviving, it will have to re-engineer itself into a standardized mega regional or national system that will be relevant and meaningful to brokers, agents and consumers alike. If this does not happen, and fairly quickly, MLS as we know it today may collapse completely.

Speaking as an geek from a syndication website( http://www.PropBot.com) , we believe that listings should always be free and that helps drive the demand in the marketplace for better tools and utilities.

We accept free bulk feeds at:
http://www.propbot.com/addYourProperties.php

First, great article. As others have said, good debates often generate good ideas, so thanks for starting this one. I’m a real estate investor in Canada, and I happened upon this debate while reading up on MLS.ca and looking for a Canadian version of Zillow (and assessing whether or not I want to build my own). To position myself before making any arguments, I would say I generally agree with all free data, all the time.

1) The current, dominant model for business in North America (may be true elsewhere, but I can’t say that with any degree of certainty) is to wring every last drop of profit from your current business model before adopting a new one. Energy companies are doing it, media companies are doing it, airlines are doing it, etc. This is no longer a successful strategy. Look at the music industry. Had they tossed aside their old model of distribution, they would be laughing now and not buried in un-winnable (or at least un-enforceable) court battles or dying slow deaths. iTunes and SouthWest (or WestJet in Canada) are great examples of companies that saw the demand for a new business model. Protecting your data as a way to connect with your clients WILL NOT WORK. “Protecting” your business from the internet has not worked for anyone. You need to embrace the technology and make it work for you.

2) Customers don’t want to replace agents (at least not yet ;). As others have said, agents are an important link in the chain. Available MLS data provides us with the answers to the first 10 questions we would ask any agent: location, square-footage, beds/baths, heating/cooling/water, build year, amenities, SALES HISTORY, etc. I’m not the guy to make that list. As a consumer, when I want to buy a car, I want to make sure it is at least the right KIND of car before I talk to the sales person. Yes, that sales person can help me find exactly the right car, but I need to be in control of when that contact happens.

3) Free data. Something that many people forget is that just because you HAVE the data doesn’t mean that you OWN the data. The data is free, just walk around your neighbourhood. Instead of having agents enter the listing, just have a simple site where sellers enter their info. Boom. Your whole system goes down. There are a million ways for people to get around your system, any system. You’re living on the time borrowed before people figure out those ways.

4) Look at ComFree in Canada. Yes, there are problems, but for people currently in the real estate industry, this is a bit scary. What happens if this catches on? What happens if they start to PAY sellers (all sellers, even those with agents) to provide their house data to the site? What happens if they hire a decent designer and improve their property search?

The fact that real estate is a big ticket, complex item has made the industry forget (or ignore) lessons from other industries (the car industry, to a lesser extent, has done this too). Continue to do so at your peril. Always remember that there are people with money and ideas who do not share your view of the world and would be very happy to steal your market share.

[…] could see we simple do not have the resources to integrate it. This particular article excerpt from GeekEstateBlog.com made it crystal clear: …there are over 900 MLS’s in the United States and that acquiring […]

As a web designer who works with Realtor’s including my father who is a broker I am often frustrated by the lack of access to MLS data. Being able to fold this into their websites is something the realtors I work with long for. These are people who want a high end website that you cant get from the notoriously bad IDX cookie cutter websites. Yet they cannot access their listings because of a monopoly that a few companies hold with MLS.

As a potential buyer I want to be able to find ALL of, and the best information that's available about houses being sold in my area. Here's what I don't want.

1. I find an agency web site in the area, look at the houses and realize that other properties that I know are available in the area are not listed on their site. Does the broker think that people looking at their web site are as computer illiterate as they apparently must be? This is a poor business model, and the brokerage will not get my business.

2. I visit a broker and hit it off; this is the person I want to work with. They give me their site URL and I look at some properties. I stop back in to talk to them, and they bring up the same property on their ID and passsword from the web, and son-of-a-gun if they don't have twice the listing information I saw on the web, price history, neighborhood, model of home, more pictures, etc. “If this was on the web,” they say, “you wouldn't need me.” On the contrary. I need an agent to get me into the place to look at it; I'll need their legal advice, procedural advice, contracting advice, etc. Ignoring for the moment that in the final analysis agents and brokers work for the seller, their job is to connect me with a house that I will spend my hard-earned money to buy. Whenever information is withheld – for any reason – the consumer has to wonder: “What else am I not able to find out about this?”

3. I go into my agent's office. They log onto their web site and begin showing me listings. After 20 or so, my eyes begin to glaze over, having seen nothing of any interest. Did they ask me what I wanted first? Of course, but without a photographic memory of the details of every listing, the agent is wandering around the listings somewhat aimlessly. Search parameters? Sure, but how do I know if a particular house in a particular neighborhood is over-priced, or one that the agent has personally listed? Not enough information. After three hours, nothing meaningful has been accomplished – unless you consider that in this RE market the agent probably would have bored stiff with otherwise nothing to do. Here's an idea, give me a quick tour of how to use the tools, turn the keyboard over to me, then leave the room so I can do my own searching in the fastest time. When I find something I'm interested in, I'll step into your office and tell you that something interesting has come up, and we can proceed. I'm sorry to have to say this, but most 10-year olds have more computer savy than your average real estate agent; so too do an awful lot of your customers.

Standardized formats? Screen-scrapers so I can download the information into a spreadsheet so I can do my own comparisons, or for that matter, how about a spreadsheet view of all of the listings that is already in Excel format so I can pull it down and look at it at? Too much information for the customer? Makes it too easy for “someone else” to aggregate the information and “work around” the agent?

Here's are a few things to consider thoughtfully and thoroughly:

1. You can list 100 properties a week, and, true, the seller pays the commission – theoretically – but if you never sell one of those properties you won't make five cents. How is limiting the exposure of the properties you hope to sell a good thing? Who cares where a customer finds it? Certainly not the customer.

2. For the most part, if you're under the age of 40, you've grown up on the web, you're used to finding information there in abundance, and you don't make any purchases, be they appliances, cars, TVs, computers, etc. without a thorough web search to compare features, availability and prices. Once you've decided what you want to buy you look for local availability and support and price in combination. You may change your selection based on those criteria, and you'll bargain for the best local price. Even Sears, for goodness sake, will “match anyone's advertised prices.” And brokers and agents want to limit the information they put on a web site? I'm likely to find the brokerage with the best information on the web, then work with an agent at that agency rather than screw around with an agent who publishes one set of info to the web but keeps the best stuff where I have to go into their office everytime I want more details. Who wouldn't? It's just a matter of time before I find that agency with the best and most easily digestible information and the ability to do meaningful comparisons; they'll then get my business.

3. A lot of things worked in 2004 that are now out of step with the current RE market. In the stock market they say that a bull market makes everyone feel like an investing genius. It's now a buyer's market, and I see price reductions every day on the listings I follow. Lots of listings are embarrassments; many prices are too high. If you're over “a certain age” you're desire to keep information private or less publicized is an impediment to your future success, though you don't see it that way. That “this is the information age” isn't just a slogan; it's a fact of life you ignore at your own peril. Let me ask this question: When you bought your last car, did you research it on the web, comparing features and price with similar models, maintenance records, or did you just go to the “same-old” dealer and buy another of the same thing? If the former, welcome to the 21st century; if the latter, ultimately, you led to the death of a large part of the American car industry, by rewarding them for products that compared poorly with the competition, leading them to assume they had a built-in customer base that would never abandon them. Oops! The RE industry is at the same crossroad; evolve or die. Give the customer, that is, the buyer who REALLY pays those commissions by buying a house, what they want. And what they want is quantities of reliable information wherever they can find it. Eventually, somebody will, and if it's not you, I think you know where that leads.

As a potential buyer I want to be able to find ALL of, and the best information that's available about houses being sold in my area. Here's what I don't want.

1. I find an agency web site in the area, look at the houses and realize that other properties that I know are available in the area are not listed on their site. Does the broker think that people looking at their web site are as computer illiterate as they apparently must be? This is a poor business model, and the brokerage will not get my business.

2. I visit a broker and hit it off; this is the person I want to work with. They give me their site URL and I look at some properties. I stop back in to talk to them, and they bring up the same property on their ID and passsword from the web, and son-of-a-gun if they don't have twice the listing information I saw on the web, price history, neighborhood, model of home, more pictures, etc. “If this was on the web,” they say, “you wouldn't need me.” On the contrary. I need an agent to get me into the place to look at it; I'll need their legal advice, procedural advice, contracting advice, etc. Ignoring for the moment that in the final analysis agents and brokers work for the seller, their job is to connect me with a house that I will spend my hard-earned money to buy. Whenever information is withheld – for any reason – the consumer has to wonder: “What else am I not able to find out about this?”

3. I go into my agent's office. They log onto their web site and begin showing me listings. After 20 or so, my eyes begin to glaze over, having seen nothing of any interest. Did they ask me what I wanted first? Of course, but without a photographic memory of the details of every listing, the agent is wandering around the listings somewhat aimlessly. Search parameters? Sure, but how do I know if a particular house in a particular neighborhood is over-priced, or one that the agent has personally listed? Not enough information. After three hours, nothing meaningful has been accomplished – unless you consider that in this RE market the agent probably would have bored stiff with otherwise nothing to do. Here's an idea, give me a quick tour of how to use the tools, turn the keyboard over to me, then leave the room so I can do my own searching in the fastest time. When I find something I'm interested in, I'll step into your office and tell you that something interesting has come up, and we can proceed. I'm sorry to have to say this, but most 10-year olds have more computer savy than your average real estate agent; so too do an awful lot of your customers.

Standardized formats? Screen-scrapers so I can download the information into a spreadsheet so I can do my own comparisons, or for that matter, how about a spreadsheet view of all of the listings that is already in Excel format so I can pull it down and look at it at? Too much information for the customer? Makes it too easy for “someone else” to aggregate the information and “work around” the agent?

Here's are a few things to consider thoughtfully and thoroughly:

1. You can list 100 properties a week, and, true, the seller pays the commission – theoretically – but if you never sell one of those properties you won't make five cents. How is limiting the exposure of the properties you hope to sell a good thing? Who cares where a customer finds it? Certainly not the customer.

2. For the most part, if you're under the age of 40, you've grown up on the web, you're used to finding information there in abundance, and you don't make any purchases, be they appliances, cars, TVs, computers, etc. without a thorough web search to compare features, availability and prices. Once you've decided what you want to buy you look for local availability and support and price in combination. You may change your selection based on those criteria, and you'll bargain for the best local price. Even Sears, for goodness sake, will “match anyone's advertised prices.” And brokers and agents want to limit the information they put on a web site? I'm likely to find the brokerage with the best information on the web, then work with an agent at that agency rather than screw around with an agent who publishes one set of info to the web but keeps the best stuff where I have to go into their office everytime I want more details. Who wouldn't? It's just a matter of time before I find that agency with the best and most easily digestible information and the ability to do meaningful comparisons; they'll then get my business.

3. A lot of things worked in 2004 that are now out of step with the current RE market. In the stock market they say that a bull market makes everyone feel like an investing genius. It's now a buyer's market, and I see price reductions every day on the listings I follow. Lots of listings are embarrassments; many prices are too high. If you're over “a certain age” you're desire to keep information private or less publicized is an impediment to your future success, though you don't see it that way. That “this is the information age” isn't just a slogan; it's a fact of life you ignore at your own peril. Let me ask this question: When you bought your last car, did you research it on the web, comparing features and price with similar models, maintenance records, or did you just go to the “same-old” dealer and buy another of the same thing? If the former, welcome to the 21st century; if the latter, ultimately, you led to the death of a large part of the American car industry, by rewarding them for products that compared poorly with the competition, leading them to assume they had a built-in customer base that would never abandon them. Oops! The RE industry is at the same crossroad; evolve or die. Give the customer, that is, the buyer who REALLY pays those commissions by buying a house, what they want. And what they want is quantities of reliable information wherever they can find it. Eventually, somebody will, and if it's not you, I think you know where that leads.

As a potential buyer I want to be able to find ALL of, and the best information that's available about houses being sold in my area. Here's what I don't want.

1. I find an agency web site in the area, look at the houses and realize that other properties that I know are available in the area are not listed on their site. Does the broker think that people looking at their web site are as computer illiterate as they apparently must be? This is a poor business model, and the brokerage will not get my business.

2. I visit a broker and hit it off; this is the person I want to work with. They give me their site URL and I look at some properties. I stop back in to talk to them, and they bring up the same property on their ID and passsword from the web, and son-of-a-gun if they don't have twice the listing information I saw on the web, price history, neighborhood, model of home, more pictures, etc. “If this was on the web,” they say, “you wouldn't need me.” On the contrary. I need an agent to get me into the place to look at it; I'll need their legal advice, procedural advice, contracting advice, etc. Ignoring for the moment that in the final analysis agents and brokers work for the seller, their job is to connect me with a house that I will spend my hard-earned money to buy. Whenever information is withheld – for any reason – the consumer has to wonder: “What else am I not able to find out about this?”

3. I go into my agent's office. They log onto their web site and begin showing me listings. After 20 or so, my eyes begin to glaze over, having seen nothing of any interest. Did they ask me what I wanted first? Of course, but without a photographic memory of the details of every listing, the agent is wandering around the listings somewhat aimlessly. Search parameters? Sure, but how do I know if a particular house in a particular neighborhood is over-priced, or one that the agent has personally listed? Not enough information. After three hours, nothing meaningful has been accomplished – unless you consider that in this RE market the agent probably would have bored stiff with otherwise nothing to do. Here's an idea, give me a quick tour of how to use the tools, turn the keyboard over to me, then leave the room so I can do my own searching in the fastest time. When I find something I'm interested in, I'll step into your office and tell you that something interesting has come up, and we can proceed. I'm sorry to have to say this, but most 10-year olds have more computer savy than your average real estate agent; so too do an awful lot of your customers.

Standardized formats? Screen-scrapers so I can download the information into a spreadsheet so I can do my own comparisons, or for that matter, how about a spreadsheet view of all of the listings that is already in Excel format so I can pull it down and look at it at? Too much information for the customer? Makes it too easy for “someone else” to aggregate the information and “work around” the agent?

Here's are a few things to consider thoughtfully and thoroughly:

1. You can list 100 properties a week, and, true, the seller pays the commission – theoretically – but if you never sell one of those properties you won't make five cents. How is limiting the exposure of the properties you hope to sell a good thing? Who cares where a customer finds it? Certainly not the customer.

2. For the most part, if you're under the age of 40, you've grown up on the web, you're used to finding information there in abundance, and you don't make any purchases, be they appliances, cars, TVs, computers, etc. without a thorough web search to compare features, availability and prices. Once you've decided what you want to buy you look for local availability and support and price in combination. You may change your selection based on those criteria, and you'll bargain for the best local price. Even Sears, for goodness sake, will “match anyone's advertised prices.” And brokers and agents want to limit the information they put on a web site? I'm likely to find the brokerage with the best information on the web, then work with an agent at that agency rather than screw around with an agent who publishes one set of info to the web but keeps the best stuff where I have to go into their office everytime I want more details. Who wouldn't? It's just a matter of time before I find that agency with the best and most easily digestible information and the ability to do meaningful comparisons; they'll then get my business.

3. A lot of things worked in 2004 that are now out of step with the current RE market. In the stock market they say that a bull market makes everyone feel like an investing genius. It's now a buyer's market, and I see price reductions every day on the listings I follow. Lots of listings are embarrassments; many prices are too high. If you're over “a certain age” you're desire to keep information private or less publicized is an impediment to your future success, though you don't see it that way. That “this is the information age” isn't just a slogan; it's a fact of life you ignore at your own peril. Let me ask this question: When you bought your last car, did you research it on the web, comparing features and price with similar models, maintenance records, or did you just go to the “same-old” dealer and buy another of the same thing? If the former, welcome to the 21st century; if the latter, ultimately, you led to the death of a large part of the American car industry, by rewarding them for products that compared poorly with the competition, leading them to assume they had a built-in customer base that would never abandon them. Oops! The RE industry is at the same crossroad; evolve or die. Give the customer, that is, the buyer who REALLY pays those commissions by buying a house, what they want. And what they want is quantities of reliable information wherever they can find it. Eventually, somebody will, and if it's not you, I think you know where that leads.

comment3,

comment4,

comment5,

I was beeing searching the google for such information and just wanted to thank you for the post. By the way, just off topic, where can i get a version of this theme? – Thanks

I think the author missed the point. I work with one particular real estate agent because he knows how to buy investment houses, and he’s darn creative on how to make that work. His website, however, sucks – I use 4 other websites to research houses I am interested in.
I also highly recommend my old agent who helped me buy my first house, as she is amazing and works really hard to help people buy their own home.
If you are simply a run-of-the-mill agent, then yes – you’re in trouble in the future, as this will obviously come to be esp. in the land of free information. I suggest you figure out what makes you exceptional, and advertise that, instead of relying on a website to get clients.

As a consumer I bypass sites which require my info, such as e-mail in order to obtain access to info (such as MLS). When a consumer is ready to make that big decision they will contact the agent of their choice.

As a software engineer and a potential home-buyer, I balk at the existing websites that feature information about homes for sale here in Canada. They do not provide the consumer with detailed information about homes that real-estate agents have access to. And I’m sorry, but there is nothing overly complex about what a realtor does! In Vancouver, the market is pretty easy and realtors don’t have to work very hard to sell a property – and if they do, they just want you to lower the price so that someone will buy it quick. Well, in this kind of market, you can’t rely on a realtor to be looking out for you – the only give priority the properties/buyers that are going to make them the biggest profit! So where does that leave the first-time buyer or someone who is on a budget and wants to do their own research for this life-changing purchase? It’s completely unfair to hide this information and only to make it available to an bunch of glorified sales people.

I agree with one of the comments. Every time I see a website or something that requires my information, I quit the page. I’ve seen the horror done by giving information in the internet. Beware everyone.