Ok -this has been on my mind for a while now, but the phone call I just received reminded me how goofy this situation is.
When we list a house for sale or lease, we put the property along with all the required information on the MLS. This allows other agents to find the property that may work for the clients they are working with. Additionally, some of the data we put in the system is then syndicated to affiliated websites that consumers can use to search for homes as well. The biggest here in Austin is Austin Home Search, however many people here and across the country turn to realtor.com as their search provider of choice. After all, it is REALTOR.com - affiliated with the National Association of REALTORS and therefore with all of us who are REALTORS.
Realtor.com relies on the agents, who pay a good chunk of change to belong to the local/state/national associations as well as subscribe to their local MLS, to provide them with all of the data that is contained on the website. So...we are PAYING to subscribe to the MLS, and that information is in turn GIVEN to realtor.com.
All of that is fine with me. Here's where I have a problem.
Realtor.com THEN turns around and attempts to sell us, the people who GIVE THEM ALL THE INFORMATION THAT MAKES THEIR SITE USEFUL AND VALUABLE, an "enhanced listing service" that puts the agents contact info on the "ad" containing the information on the listing. The listing that we the REALTOR secured...and GAVE to realtor.com.
Sure, you don't have to pay for enhanced listings....heck, you don't even have to allow a listing to be syndicated to any of these websites. But it certainly would not be in our clients best interest for us to make that decision.
Here's what happens. If one of my agents does not pay for this special level of service, the phone number that shows up on the consumer website is MY phone number. Now granted, all of the listings at our company technically belong to me as the broker, however, the individual agent secured the listing, knows the client, knows the property, and is best equipped to answer question about said property. Why then, would it be appropriate to publish MY number as the contact number, when the broker has a very limited amount of detail information on the property??
I think it is completely wrong for realtor.com, who has a useful site only because we as agents GIVE them the information, to then turn around and say well, yes you GAVE us the info, but we're not going to give you anything - you are actually going to have to pay us in order for a buyer to get contact information for you instead of your broker.
It's just wrong. It is wrong to treat the agents that way. It is wrong to put the brokers in that position. And it is WRONG WRONG WRONG to create a situation, routinely and by policy, that creates a cumbersome environment for the public as well as one that makes the brokers look like they are uninformed.
So there ya go....that's my first public rant of 2011.
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