The board of realtors had me over for a chat, wondering if there were any ideas they could implement to improve their standing and ability to assist our fellow realtors before being run over by the ZillowTruliaRedfin truck.
So I laid out my favorite, plus I’ll add two more here – but I have no expectation of anything being any different:
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Step up to the public microphone and announce your commitment to stop short-sale fraud amongst realtors, which would immediately improve your reputation in the public eye.
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Put imformative youtubes on the association’s website to educate the public.
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Publish the sales history of each agent.
Of course, when I brought up the incessant short-sale fraud being perpetrated by realtors everywhere, the president of the San Diego Board literally said that she wasn’t aware of it, and then tried to coax me into filing a complaint – and missed the whole point. Just making a stand would improve your reputation, if you have a perp walk or two it would be icing on the cake.
The members of the local association in attendance, all of whom were busy working their phones and paying little attention, did give time to the one agent who complained that the emails sent from the association get lost in the hundreds she receives every day. She requested that they do something different in the subject line of each email to alert her that it is an important email, and not spam. These are the types of suggestions they really wanted, not ideas that would cause them to get off their duff.
Thanks for the candor, that’s why people follow your site. Real change will only happen once a pain threshold is crossed, and times are too fat right now. Not different from any other service industry, the old guard dismisses innovation until they are hopelessly out-flanked. You kids and your fancy Internet, sheesh.
Thanks SS!
The sentiment expressed by the group in this seminar is similar to that here at this facebook link, where most of the older agents bash zillow and obama, with an occasional remark from reality:
https://www.facebook.com/InmanNews/posts/10151578686259211
The comment with the most likes:
Really? Is the President going to discuss Zillow’s Zestimate for determining home values which generally mislead the public about the value of their homes in the current housing market? As the leader of our country, he could have found knowledgeable market experts to discuss housing.
And others – 3 typical, four that are more realistic:
1. It’s a conundrum that the Zestimates are so off base, and the Z portal is not a “complete and true market analysis” yet consumers have confidence in the site for “consumer information.” I’d like to know what info Zillow provides for consumer education besides sketchy Zestimates. What exactly is the “edge?” If Realtor market analyses were that far off, they’d be shown the door with a boot.
2. Wow! 20+ years in this biz. I’m shocked anyone would take zillow or trulia seriously. Sigh… Terrible, terrible choices….
3. So how much did Zillow pay for that? This’s consistent with Obamas behavior with big money.
4. Perhaps the truth that Zillow is better focused on reaching home buyers than NAR. Zillow also seems to have a better reputation than NAR, as NAR hasn’t maintained the REALTOR brand by ensuring ethics by their members. Zillow also has a better understanding of how to reach the public and are using this housing policy discussion to help people and actually improve the housing market by lifting credit restrictions.
5. This is a crowdsourcing play. Zillow has become a household name, NAR has not because it is a professional trade association, not a consumer focused resource.
6. Zillow is real estate in today’s world. NAR needs to move into a new generation.
7. NAR needs to get it together and put a product out there that can compete with Zillow (integrated, comprehensive, free to use) if they want to stay relevant in the future.
Zillow and Redfin have a better reputation with consumers because they treat consumers as partners in evaluating the information (sales and listing history, past listings, public (but difficult to access) records, etc), rather than ‘marks’ to be spoon fed deceptive slices of information by limited websites.
of course *evaluating* that information does benefit from competent guides (like JtR!), but many consumers want to at least *see* the data, even if they need help interpreting it.
and certainly do not want to be misinformed by salesmen and their trade groups solely concerned with lining their pockets.
Thanks freedomCM!
This will all take care of itself as all of the old guard retires or dies off. NAR will just go extinct.
To the extent to which asymmetric informational advantage is a fundamental element of the real estate industry, it is no different then many others and real transparency comes slowly, if at all.