A recent post over on the Inman blog, a question stoked some embers in my head:
If the DOJ wins and NAR is forced to retract policies, what is the likely chain of events to follow? Who wins and who loses?
Gregg Swan of BloodHound fame says:
If the DOJ tries to play pirate with the current system, the big brokerages may go all in-house, which they could easily do already. Then there will be no small brokerages.
I usually side with Greg, but not here 
Going ‘in-house’ would be suicidal for any brokerage, analogous to cutting ones face off to spite the nose. There are already too many alternative listing ’services’ willing to play ball on the consumers terms that are far superior to what most Big House real estate brokerages offer in the way of net savvy search. It may work on the (very) short term, but….
Which leads me to why I started this post:
Protecting The Listing is an Exercise in Futility. Why?
- The information contained within the Listing isn’t the RE professionals, it’s the consumers. Theres no getting around this dynamic anymore. Real estate professionals need to stop acting like my home is their proprietary information, and instead market it like it’s their own home.
- The relative information built around the listing- Recent sales and dollar amounts, tax records, neighborhood trends, etc is public. Finding it has been the dubious task best left to a Realtor. Today the info has become easy to find and digest as more businesses cultivate, farm, filter, and redisplay these once disparate data pools- in user-friendliest of formats.
- It benefits the listing agent (and most importantly the seller) to market a Listing as publicly as possible!
What other public sales related industry keeps information about their products price and whereabouts ambiguous, at best? Imagine walking into Wal-Mart with no signage or methods to stacking their aisles. The only way you could find a tube of toothpaste was to ask one of the 500 employees, who would then only show you where and tell you how much, if you signed a contract that paid them to do so. This makes 0 sense.
I can appreciate the Listing Agents revenue model, as it aligns well with seller incentives- Get me the best price for my home. Higher price = Higher commission. Happy client = Happy Realtor. Completely reasonable.
Telling me to fork over a % of my homes value for a Buyers Agent is rudely illogical and cost prohibitive in todays market. This isn’t just the opinion of a notorious flogger in the real estate blogger space, its quite popular amongst the consumer status-quo too.
Look deeply- protecting the Listing is all about keeping the Buyers Agent alive and over funded. What other purpose does ‘proprietizing’ a Listing serve?
Really, how difficult is it to ‘be’ a Buyers Agent today and get paid tens-of-thousands of dollars to show someone else’s data?
What’s their incentive to get me the best price? They get paid more if I pay more (as a buyer).?.?
I’ll go a step further and bet anyone a dollar that I can inform a client as well or better than a typical Buyers Agent in my indigenous market (and many others).
And what I can’t provide? I know someone who can, and at a lot less cost.
In the consumers eyes, Zillow, Redfin, Trulia, Propsmart, etc. are solutions to The Problem-The Buyers Agent Welfare Program–Which, ironically, has fostered the growth of these company’s.
I admire Redfin for taking the most direct approach to cutting this umbilical cord…Is anyone of them the solution? No. Is their ‘type’ getting close? Yes. What is the killer app that ties it all together? Yet to be identified.The above sites have blazed a previously unbeaten path which others (wink-wink) are poised and determined to leverage for the benefit of the consumer…and the real estate professional, provided they can swallow some pride, stop drinking the Kool-Aid, and adopt to todays marketplace. Hoarding information in the Age of Information is a losing proposition.
Big Business is dead, acting like one should get you shot on site.
OK…Ive vented enough for the eve..
