I spent 10-15 minutes watching the first zoom call by our MLS representatives yesterday who were informing us about the big MLS upgrade coming on September 21st.
But it turns out that the big ‘upgrade’ doesn’t mean we will get a shiny new car to replace the turd we’ve been driving around since the mid-90s. Instead, they will tear our current system apart, and hope we can figure out how to put it back together – see the FAQs above.
Not only that, but the ‘upgrade’ will means from September 17-20 they will turn the MLS into ‘read-only’. No new listings, no price reductions, no new pendings, etc.
Great – put us on an involuntary four-day vacation while you deconstruct the main tool we use to sell homes, and then make us put it back together by ourselves.
The real purpose for the ‘upgrade’ is so our MLS will better conform to RESO standards, which would make it easier to create a national MLS someday. The only reason to have a national MLS was if you were going to have a search portal to go with it, and mount an attack on Zillow.
We did get more news about that today.
The Broker Public Portal announced they have hired a face of the project. Inman News wrote a full article on him, where he said that he expects to overtake Zillow in the next two years. Here’s the closing segment:
“When that shopper is ready to become a buyer, and wants real information about the property she’s interested in, she doesn’t get re-directed to some random agent who has probably never seen the house. She goes right to the agent who knows that property best. That’s better for the client, and better for the agent.”
Rather than spending hundreds of millions to advertise to consumers, the BPP will spread the word on Homesnap via agents, according to Rand.
“It’s a lot easier and cheaper to market to a million real estate agents than 250 million raw consumers. If we get the agents, they’ll bring the consumers,” he said.
He thinks consumers are going to leave Zillow because agents tell them to use Homesnap? The Homesnap app would have to be a far-superior portal for that to happen, AND the Premier Agents who make a good living from advertising on Zillow would have to want a change.
Sounds far-fetched to me, especially within two years.
I commented on the Inman article, but it got deleted. I paraphrased it here:
https://twitter.com/InmanAndrea/status/1303481651222048769
The most entertaining part of the zoom call was the shirtless tattooed fella walking around behind mom who didn’t notice as she was delivering the most important details of the call.
A longtime advocate and founding member of the Broker Public Portal—a national portal that emphasizes it is committed to pro-consumer and pro-agent Fair Display Guidelines—Rand said his mission is helping the BPP achieve its goals.
BPP was started with three goals, Rand told RISMedia.
1. “Create a top-notch agent- and client-friendly search portal.”
2. “Build a comprehensive platform for agent-client collaboration.”
3. “Get them all in the hands of every agent and client the country.”
“With the Homesnap app and the Homesnap Pro agent tools, they’ve achieved the first two goals. Now, it’s my job to reach the third by spreading the word, and getting every MLS in the country on board,” said Rand. “My two-year goal working with the BPP with Homesnap is to make it the No. 1 real estate search site in the country. We have an opportunity to take the BPP to the forefront of the conversation about our industry’s future.”
“I challenge any agent in a Homesnap market to do what I did before accepting the job—take a “taste test.” Get two phones out—one on Homesnap and one on any other real estate portal,” Rand told RISMedia. “Then run searches, save properties, put them both through their paces. They’ll see what I saw, which is that Homesnap is better than any other real estate search app on the market. ”
In 2019, Rand was honored by RISMedia as an inaugural member of the Real Estate Newsmakers Hall of Fame, which recognizes an exclusive group of industry luminaries who have gone above and beyond in their contributions to the real estate industry.
Rand is also the author of two popular books about real estate and has been a featured speaker at dozens of industry conferences and conventions. He is known for pioneering the concept of “Client-Oriented Real Estate” or “CORE,” an educational philosophy designed to raise the level of client service provided by the industry by teaching agents how to be “great at their jobs.”
Due to his new responsibilities with the BPP, Rand will step down from his additional role as general counsel of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Rand Realty but will still lead his company’s career development and educational programs, and provide regular training programs to its agents.
Rand earned both his undergraduate and a law degree from Georgetown University and a master’s degree in law from Stanford University. Before entering real estate, he was both an attorney for a Wall Street law firm and a law professor at Brooklyn and Fordham Law Schools. A longtime resident of Manhattan, he now lives in the suburbs of the city, in the Hudson River village of Nyack, N.Y.
So the real purpose is to direct the online shopper to the listing agent, so that they can double-end the deal?
So the real purpose is to direct the online shopper to the listing agent, so that they can double-end the deal?
Yes, apparently. Because it was said by the new leader of the realtor world who has been a long-time brokerage owner/attorney/Stanford grad, he can’t say his comment was inadvertent.
Buyer-agents are toast, and the sooner we admit it and move on, the better.
You’ll never convince me that it is what’s best for the buyers or the industry. But I’m a dinosaur – all that matters now to realtors is profit.