With every day of innovation and aggregation by competitors, the MLS is becoming fast becoming a guide toward property offerings and valuations rather than “the” or even “a” definitive source. There are at least two reasons for this change – 1) The innovation of data aggregation competitors with whom many are familiar – Zillow, Homegain, Trulia, Yahoo, AOL, Google, the list seems to grow every week…. 2) Realtors seem to have taken the MLS for granted as something that has always been and will always “be there.”The MLS is in the process of devolving/evolving into just another data source. The root cause is the lack of accuracy of the data input by the agents. To be the best data source, one has to input the best raw data. That simply has not been the case for some time, due partially to the strength of the real estate market for the past six years, but also to simply laziness and lack of accountability. How can one maintain a market lead when the data lack integrity?What differentiates the MLS from its competitors is the offer of cooperation between Brokers and the fact that at this moment, the vast majority of properties are marketed through the MLS. The MLS remains the single largest aggregation of property data out there.
Browsing Category Public Perception
The 80-20 rule
There is a rule that says 20% of the Realtors do 80% of the business. Apparently this is called the Pareto Principle (it’s amazing what I learn by blogging). With that in mind, I ran some quick MLS numbers – 290 Realtors have had more than 5 “sides” – either a listing or buying transaction since 1 January of this year. This is approximately 25% of the Realtor population in the CharlAlbemarle area. 475 had at least one and less than five sides. This profession is not just easy money.
Weekend links
Predicting population growthVirginia land use to follow road plan – yeah, we’ll see.Real estate advertising is focused more and more online.The share of spending on online real estate ads grew from 10.3 percent to 14.7 percent, and is expected to grow to a 32.1 percent market share in 2010. Real estate ad spending in newspapers, meanwhile, is expected to shrink 32.9 percent from 2006-2010, which would give newspapers a 30.4 percent share of real estate ad spending in 2010.Negative real estate headlines – might they be a driving factor in buyers’ psyches?Energy prices slice into consumer spendingNew Study Pinpoints top Places Where Real-Estate Prices May Fall-and Jonathan Miller’s excellent analysis earlier this weekPick your response wisely. Sometimes, initiating a pissing contest can backfire.
Towards representation
My wife called to me last week to watch a segment on the Today show (no link to the story) focusing on Sellers choosing not to have representation when selling their houses – some call them FSBOs…. There are several different business models available in today’s market that will simply post (usually accurate) listings in the MLS for a certain fee, but will not provide any negotiating, representation or any other assistance. There is a place for that – no question.The future of today’s Realtor is going to depend more and more on the representation aspect of real estate transactions. Any monkey can do data entry (look at some of the MLS listings and you will think that a monkey could easily have done better; there is no excuse for not putting in at least eight photos with a property)…. Representing the minutiae of a transaction – the seemingly little problems that can swiftly become seemingly insurmountable, managing the people and emotions involved, knowing about and doing those aspects of a transaction that can make a transaction a good or a painful memory – those are the parts of this profession that will Being able to successfully represent clients will define the future of this profession. There is much online competition for the real estate industry – Zillow, Trulia, Redfin, Google – that will fragment real estate search. Picking up the pieces by representing clients and their best interests will define the successful Realtor. No amount of online data will replace a walking into a basement and immediately knowing whether there has been water infiltration recently, or whether the wood floors are real 3/4 inch wood or a laminate-type product.
NAR comes out swinging
In response to today’s Consumer Federation of America’s report lambasting the real estate industry, the National Association of Realtors releases a statement that fills me with great pride:America’s real estate industry is one of the most competitive business environments in the world, characterized by low barriers to entry, …Is this really something that we should be proclaiming as a positive?… Thanks to Inman for the quote. Thanks to NAR for defending the profession. “It’s really competitive – anybody can do it!” (My quote)The authors, although misguided in some ways, make some very valid points. There will likely be some discussion in the next day or so about this report …Do all brokers offer services of exactly equal value? Should novice brokers who have just received their license routinely charge the same prices of highly skilled brokers who have been practicing for decades?No. More analysis to come.
Image is not “everything”
I may have the opportunity to contribute to a discussion (a Virginia Association of Realtors “workgroup”, I believe it’s called) regarding how to improve Realtors’ image. I try to enter everything with an open mind; that said, my first thought is a simple one – improve the product. Never have I heard a successful Realtor say that either the entrance standards or continuing education standards were remotely sufficient. Let’s work on raising the standards of practice and then work on image. So long as people enter this profession because they don’t have anything better to do and because it’s perceived as “easy,” our profession’s image will suffer.
Century 21’s bad commercial
This Century 21 ad is troublesome because it shows a Century 21 agent pressuring a couple to make an offer on a house. With this part, I don’t have an issue – more often than not, one half of the couple has more say than the other: the wife talking — some say browbeating — her husband into buying a house while the agent listens in to the conversation on the speakerphone. This part however, does:”This listing is special, John,” says the voice of their real estate agent over the speakerphone…. “This is awesome,” says the wife. Pressure like this is one of the reasons that agents get a bad reputation. Would you return to that agent when it came time to sell the house?… I have wanted to write about this ad for weeks, but had not found the commercial online…. Realtors have enough bad publicity to deal with; we don’t need to put our own out there.