History of REALTOR.com (Excerpted from Realtor.org website)
"In November 1996, the Board of Directors of the National Association of REALTORS® approved an agreement between the REALTORS® Information Network (RIN)—NAR’s wholly-owned subsidiary--and RealSelect, Inc. to take over the operations of NAR’s official Internet site, REALTOR.com. At the time, many business models were considered to finance the development of REALTOR.com. NAR’s Leadership Team decided against using dues dollars or asking for a special assessment of the membership to fund REALTOR.com. While Homestore and its investors have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build and operate REALTOR.com, no NAR funds or NAR member dues dollars have ever been used for the creation or operation of the site."
It is now time for the NAR Leadership Team to issue a special assessment and buy the publicly traded Move corporation. Here is why:
1. Realtor.com is not supporting the National Association of Realtors stated mission "to help its members become more profitable and successful." Most Realtors I talk with hate Realtor.com. Or perhaps more accurately they hate the way Move monetizes the Realtor.com asset by selling extremely high priced marketing packages to Realtors. Prominent placement on Realtor.com should be a Realtor's right.
2. Move and it's leadership have failed to leverage the Realtor.com asset to reach consumers. Realtor.com has less than a 5% market share among real estate category websites, with most of it's top competitors boasting a marketing budget of less than 10% of that of Realtor.com's. Realtor.com had a huge first mover advantage, perhaps the most valuable domain name possible, hundreds of millions of dollars in marketing support, and the, at least initial, grassroots support of 1,000,000+ Realtors.
3. NAR cannot easily get out of its Operating Agreement with Move:
"Key Provisions in the Operating Agreement
The operating agreement negotiated more than eight years ago contained a number of important provisions ensuring NAR’s control over the content and operations of the site. Those provisions remain in full force today and continue to guide the relationship between NAR and Homestore (NASDAQ: HOMS), which owns RealSelect.
1. The National Association of REALTORS® owns and controls REALTOR.com. NAR's subsidiary, RIN, also owns approximately 4% of Homestore's stock, and maintains two seats on the Real Select board, and one seat on the Homestore board. In addition to their fiduciary responsibilities to those entities, the NAR appointees also:
* Represent NAR and RIN’s interests in all matters pertaining to the agreement;
* Assure compliance with all agreements with RIN and NAR, and report any non-compliance or other concerns to the RIN board and through them, to the NAR Board of Directors; and
* Provide quarterly reports to the Leadership Team on all significant Homestore activities.
2. Basic real property ads on REALTOR.com, including the primary photo, are free to REALTORS®.
3. No “For Sale by Owner” properties may ever appear on REALTOR.com.
4. NAR remains the sole owner of the REALTOR.com site and trademark.
5. The use and presentation of property listings remain under the control of NAR. Homestore cannot market any property data or information derived from the data without NAR approval.
6. Advertising on REALTOR.com is strictly controlled. For example, no REALTOR® detailed listing will ever contain a banner from a competitor. Advertisers are limited on the amount of space they can occupy on the site at any given time.
7. NAR must approve changes to the design or text of the REALTOR.com home page.
8. Homestore must conduct all of its real estate related business in Real Select, where NAR has substantial control. Should Homestore ever be acquired by a real estate related entity, RIN has the ability to terminate its agreement for the operation of REALTOR.com.
Homestore operates REALTOR.com as a business. Its separation from NAR allows the company to make decisions that could potentially pose difficult problems for a trade association on business terms. These include the pricing of REALTOR.com products and services to REALTORS® and the development and marketing of new products and services."
4. Relatively speaking, it's cheap. Move's stock price is in the dumps along with the rest of the real estate sector; it's always best to buy in a down market.
Move's stock is trading at just about a three year low. It's market cap is roughly $350 million with Current Assets over $200 million, and a Total Equity position of over $100. This means it's Enterprise Value is under $250 million, or in otherwords under 1x of Move's last years revenue!
5. Move has lots of other assets that NAR could spin off to lessen the out of pocket acquisition price.
- TopProducer: This is one of Move's biggest money makers, bringing in over 10% of 2007 revenues with over 65,000 subscribers.
- Move.com: A top 10 most trafficked real estate site.
- Rent.com: 5th most trafficked real estate website.
- WelcomeWagon
- Moving.com
Realtor.com should be controlled and operated by the National Association of Realtors. It is our namesake, and the internet is too important to Realtors to just outsource.
I take it you wrote my comparison of realtor.com to localism the other day...
$2399 for a freakin zip code...that my friend is ridiculous! I agree with you so much! Sell it!
Jon, you are offering them superior investment ideas that are well worth investigating, however, with NARs current track record, I fear your ideas may simply be ignored. I, for one, hope they prove me wrong and do not remain ignorant to the idea that a good investment is a good investment... Enjoyed your presentation and talking points. It should be very interesting to see where this conversational thread goes. C.
Jeremy, "they" are supposed to automatically convert the MLS listings to Realtor.com but they don't. I called them because I couldn't find two of my listings on the Realtor.com website. "They" had the nerve to ask me to pay them on a sliding scale to enhance my seller's listing after I informed them I spend most of my time as a Buyer's Broker and can't justify the cost (when I rarely take on more than 4 listings per month). The more listings you have, the more money "they" wanted and the irony was my listings never showed up. I give each client monthly reports and document what websites they are on and how many views/hits they've collected. I monitor this activity very closely and was not happy to discover "they" were not in compliance with their agreement with LIBOR. I'm with Jon, we need a new vendor.
Jonathan,
Agreed- though many real estate agents say it's imperative to have your listing on REALTOR.com. The problems REALTOR.com have are systemic and organizational. They provide a lesson for all service providers to live by- Care about your customers.
Consumers will ALWAYS go to REALTOR.com. REALTOR is more commonly used than real estate agent- they have a great domain name. Sometimes I think we make a mistake in thinking that consumers are like us, all of them are on the internet All night and all day- just not so.
Anyway, yes NAR would be wise to make the moves on Move. It is a valuable internet property and they would be serving their members well.
In these days we can use all the help we ca nget. Thank you for the info Jonathan
Jon- I hadn't given it much thought but you make some great points. I'd love to see better results from NAR's online presence... and if it means putting the money to a better use, well, I'm for that.
I have not used Realtor.com for so long and it could be a great tool for all of us.
With my previous brokerage, we were not allowed (strongly discouraged) to publish our listings on Realtor.com due to the exorbitant costs, and the loss of control over our listings (updates were very slow and banner ads prevalent). But I'm curious...so NAR purchases Realtor.com...then what? Are they in a position to manage the platform themselves? Would they have to farm it out to another 3rd party?...
Well NAR does have the CRT- :-)
Dude, you're on a tear.
Im not a Realtor so I don't have a dog in this hunt. My opinion is this; NAR screwed up by "outsourcing' to Move.com. Controlling your e-estate (technology) is important. That's the very reason I don't rely SOLELY on Active Rain for all my marketing efforts; you might sell it to someone who isn't so friendly
NB: I trust Jon Washburn; I don't trust his stockbroker (who wants him to make a huge windfall) :)
Seriously, NAR not controlling Realtor.com is like letting a Republican vendor control Moveon.org. (which I wouldn't mind)
Jonathan,
In my market, it seems every agent is utilizing realtor.com and boy, is it expensive. I wonder how many will be able to afford the exhorbitant fees with the current market decline. I'm going to give resubscribing a lot of thought.
NAR just put out a huge amount of propaganda, stating that all Realtors have access to free listings on Realtor. com, and there are even more upgrades for Realtors with "featured listings". And yet I can't find any of our listings on Realtor.com. Perhaps you need to be part of Realtor Association owned MLS to get those free listigs? Seems like a mis-service to all Western Washigton Realtors to me.
PS I refuse to put "Realtors" in all caps until they comply with the contract they offered me when I signed up. Where are my listings?
Very well written. All excellent points too. I believe the only real mistake we could make would be to *ever* stop talking about this. We need to light a fire that will never burn out.
Fran
It's funny how they charge me for MY OWN info! I stopped buying add-ons. They are no where in Google ---um, where the CONSUMER IS!!
They are appalled that I didn't renew all my pricy upgrades---I said, "I'd rather pay Trulia---and I ain't gonna pay them either!"
Russell
Completely agree! Again a VERY important post and AR'ers, again, missed the boat!
I've been saying this for years! Thank you, maybe someone will listen to you!
Having NAR manage Realtor.com? Hell they can't even manage themselves!
Realtors across the nation need to starve Realtor.com into bankruptcy, then they need to overthrow NAR.
Jonathan, is the next post in the series going to reflect the inability of NAR to support the Realtors who support them?
Hi Jon - you made some excellent points in this post. Clearly very well-thought out, and I surely hope someone in power positions at NAR reads this post and passes it through leadership for them to give some very serious consideration to. I saw that NAR has begun posting here on AR - perhaps whoever that person is will see this post and make sure it gets passed around the NAR Executive Committee. I know there are NAR Directors here on AR - perhaps they'll see it, too.
Ann
Jon - I agree with all of your points except I am not sure BAR can manage anything and the thought of it frightens me.
Good points. I have to rethink my tools as well.
Jon, well I learned something....didn't know realtor.com owned top producer, wonder how many agents that use it and love it, and hate realtor.com know that. Perhaps they do, but I don't use it so didn't realize it.
Jon: This has been one of my beefs for a very long time! Something really needs to be done and hopefully your 'clout' will bring about a change--NAR MUST DO SOMETHING NOW!
Not to open up a whole new can of worms but, at least Zillow does something about an error when REALTORS complain--correcting the error immediately without trying to SELL you something else in return!
I QUIT Realtor.com a year ago, and haven't regretted the decision one bit. AND, I've saved a ton of $$$. They were getting too greedy as fas as I'm concerned.
I seems that I remember that at one point not so long ago MOVE made an offer to purchase AR, and now AR has filed suit against MOVE? That wouldnt have anything to do with this post would it?
Realtor.com is still the most popular real estate search site, so for me it is a necessary evil. Luckily, remax is #2, so I've got the top two covered.
Very interesting. I will have to investigate this some more now. Thanks for the insight.
When Realtor.com sold out Realtors to begin with....you had to know it would not end well for the people who they are supposed to work for.
Marlene said "And yet I can't find any of our listings on Realtor.com."
Marlene, that is not their fault. NWMLS stopped the automatic feed. Your company needs to provide the feed direct. I use Jan Chapman at www.LogicalDog.com to get the listings over to Realtor.com She has a low cost option. You can read about it on her website. The NWMLS Board voted to discontinue the feed some time ago, so that's a local issue.
I seems that I remember that at one point not so long ago MOVE made an offer to purchase AR, and now AR has filed suit against MOVE? That wouldnt have anything to do with this post would it?
That was over a year ago, wasn't it? Are you critiquing Move.com as a REALTOR or as Active Rain CEO, Jon? (We often forget that Jonathan's been a REALTOR since he was 18).
If you're wearing your REALTOR hat, it would make sense that you critique Zillow, Trulia, and Move (as you've been doing). Realty.bots are beating the heck out of local agents in the SERPs from the aggregated data you gave them. I'm reading this article as a warning from Jon...as an industry player.
Am I missing something here?
Tomato, Tomatoe.
The fact remains that Realtor.com (which has the most listings) is a loser--no matter what they say.
Google anything to do with real estate--does REaltor.com come up ANYWHERE? Google Miami Beach real estate, San Francisco real estate--------N........A.......D........A.
REALTOR.com = NO RESULTS FOR THE PEOPLE WHO PAID FOR IT. If it did, there wouldn't be ANY wiggle room for Zillow, Trulia or even me.
For the tech agent, this is big time disintermediation. I can go out there and have first crack at all those potential clients.
Thinking logically, I should have to be behind:
1. REALTOR.com
2. Any Realogy company
3. My company Web site.
One word: NADA :)
I nominate this post for POST OF THE YEAR.
ARDELL
I love ur commment about the NWMLS:
The NWMLS stops the auto feed so that Brokers like you have to PAY someone ELSE to feed your listings to REALTOR.com.
That's a board that is really serving YOU well.
I gotta go get me some mini Diet Cokes. Ann?
When in my first months of getting in the business, I made the mistake of paying Realtor.com for several extras which never helped make a sale. Realtor.com charges us for everything and anything they can, and the rates do not compare to other websites. With free sites getting more and more traffic, and the ActiveRainers helping each other concerning our web presence, there is no reason to pay a 3rd party for mediocre results. I compare it to my local newspaper, it impresses someone during your listing presentation, but does not lead to selling your clients' property. NAR needs to realize that their own members are turning elsewhere for web business, before Realtor.com becomes completely useless!
Could not agree more. Absolutely loathe realtor.com as it is practiced now. They are DEFINITELY NOT US. And truth is as long as NAR allows this charade that's nothing more than a focused fleece of its members, they are not a too distant second to how we feel about Move.
Much agree with Kevin directly above... and yes, following the exercise we did yesterday with Rich's localism list of links, our questions did get answered, and we did talk to him as well.
cheers
I cannot believe the lousy service I get from Realtor.com as a dues paying Realtor. I used to have enhanced until my rates doubled in one year! I don't know why they think their service to me is worth so much with so little results. Here in less that a year on AR I am on the first page of a google search for free. Thank you for that!
web 2.0 has replaced their technology.Reltor.com does not provide the kind of information clients want anymore. It needs a total overhaul but with declining membership they have started offering entire offices large discounts to boost the bottom line.
Kevin and I agree completely on this post how bout that lol. I have the same question Rich raised about who would control/pay for the platform?
I've been noticing for last six months that my googling never brings up realtor.com on first couple of pages.
While I don't like to be cynical, NAR has not exactly been a leader in technology. I think as members we need to be demanding much more from NAR in general. I suppose a realtor.com ownership could be a catalyst....
Thanks Jon, good fodder.
Carole
Being honest and stating facts should NEVER be confused or labeled as cynicism.
Most people find me hard to take because, if it's black, it's black and I'm gonna say it's black.
How could saying "Realtor.com is not found in the SERPS" be viewed as cynical?
Realtor.com is old school: "People will go directly to Realtor.com." Uh, DUH! People go DIRECTLY TO GOOGLE!
Being PC, in my world, is such a waste of time.
Has anyone ever thought that the agents WHO PAY for Realtor.com ARE THE CONSUMER?
If I'm paying for it, god-d*mmit, I'M THE CONSUMER.
Kevin, your style has never, not once, bothered me. Str8t talk is never bad. I just don't always agree with you LOL. But we are definitely on the same page here and yes, anyone who pays for their service is the customer/consumer. They don't seem to care.
It's not asking me for a captcha so not sure this will work !
Carole,
Did you know I'm from Brook Park? I used to run nightclubs and DJ in the flats (Coconuts, Noisemakers etc)
Betcha didn't know that!
Kevin I did not know that! Did you grow up with Michael Symon or is he older than you? (He just finally moved from Brookpark).
Now I'm smiling! No wonder you are a straight shooter lol
No Michael Symon.
Graduated from Midpark 1985
Kelly- You don't have to play with the devil. It is agents buying into this lie that it is a necessary evil and not educating their sellers as to what really works.
Jon- Since the inception of Realtor.com we have sold one listing as a direct result of the site. We have A LOT OF listings!
It is a total waste of our money of which they get NO part of anymore. We used all their fancy stuff for the first 5 years they had it out, then we stopped it all when we saw the ROI.
Just like we don't do print ads anymore.
It is all about educating your sellers. If the sellers say they want their homes enhanced on Realtor.com we show them how and where we get the buyers. When a seller calls, just once in a while they do, where is our listing on Realtor.com. I say it is there but that is not something we participate in and then send our stats from our sites we do get traffic on.
If you are the listing agent than you should be in control of your marketing. The seller is not to TELL YOU how to do your job.
I think Realtor.com is one of the biggest rip offs there is for agents and they should NOT tolerate it. If they would all gets some guts and just not buy, that would send a strong signal to stop abusing agent pocketbooks.
One more thing, to the commenter above who said not everyone spends every minute on the web like we do. I would amend that to not everyone spends every minute searching for homes on the web. Most web addicts are not even browsing for homes.
So what site would they go to when they decided to buy? Unless I'm mistaken, if I am always on google or yahoo why would I not check out their home site instead of realtor.com? It all makes sense to me. And the Realtor.com site looks so 'yesterday' even at my age I would not be there unless I thought I had no other options.
Jonathan~ It is amazing how many Realtors do NOT realize that Realtor.com is NOT the Be All End All.....I NEVER used the enhanced version because it was a ploy from them to get more of our money while they use each of "OUR" listings and then have the nerve to charge us even more money.... Consumers WANT more pictures and they should be automatically provided so that they come back indefinitely!
Vickie
The issue is we are the consumer in this equation and we are not DEMANDING more.
More service, more results, more traffic. I so over their canned "we have 17 trillion viewers/listings, etc.-- AND the reason YOU ARE NOT GETTING THEM IS BECAUSE":
1. you need 700 pictures as opposed to 675
2. you need virtual tours
3. you need to blog on our site
It's always something that WE NEED TO DO - to yield zero results.
oh and you need the upgrade---
Jonathan - I begrudgingly pay for showcase listing... but when my contract is up at the end of the year, I'm not renewing... They are not in touch with REALTORS OR consumers and other sites are eating away rapidly at their market share... they don't care about us, it's all about the bottom line.
Debbi
For me, I wish they would be MORE concerned about the bottom line. If they were, Realtor.com wouldn't be the loser it is today.
I disagree with Kelly above, it is not the #1 most visited site by consumers. Don't know where her info comes from but just recently a review by HitWise it(Realtor.com) was not there. They may WANT you to believe it is relevant but the numbers don't support it. In fact I think the site is totally antiquated & somewhere a few years ago they dropped the ball to be on top. It's a dirty shame that they aren't more relevant both to consumers & agents alike.
Agree with Katerina.
Who tried to buy AR last year? Wasn't it them?
But Kevin... can you tell us how you REALLY feel? Stop dancing around it...
R.com is a joke. They should have the most power in the market, and by a long shot... but they can't make anything happen. Heck, I could run it better than Move. The SEO must be crap because I can NEVER find my listings there from Google, and usually can beat out Zillow and Trulia for many terms, but R.com just stays off of the RADAR.
Of course, they are starting to roll out the tools that the other sites have had for six months or a year... and before that they were 3 or so years behind the tech curve.
As a non-impartial observer, I could not agree more. Realtors are very poorly served by Realtor.com and by Top Producer. This is not opinion, but fact.
Most Top Producer sites (and all pages on Realtor.com) are sub-domains. That means that they cannot be indexed by search engines without very heavy optimization and much time, if at all. Since NAR tells us that 84% of Internet buyers find their agent with a search engine, that ought to give you an idea of the total disconnect between the organization trying to help Realtors, NAR, and the organization with the most lucrative franchise in all real estate, Move.
I also completely discredit Move's claim that "Realtor.com is the most visited real estate portal." Well, maybe it is by realtors, but not consumers! Let me explain: If realtor.com has 7 million page views a month, and each picture on a page counts as a seperate page view (that is their policy) , how many page views do they really have? Secondly, if NAR has one million members actively posting listings, how many of those 7 million page views are realtors posting listings and how many are consumers looking for a home on a positively offensive sign in that wants to know what a prospective buyer wants to spend--first-- instead of what town they want to live in?
The individual real estate agent needs their own site. If 65,000 have Top Producer sites, and those sites are laregely subdomains that can't be found by internet buyers, how many agents are getting their money's worth from Move?
As if the entire Homestore fiasco were not enough, Move was reported as having some questionable investment frozen and that investment was a huge percentage of their liquidity. When will NAR get the message that NAR and its members have outgrown Move and its motives?
I think it's past time that realtors improved on the largely Move controlled situation that results in less than 10% of realtors being pleased with the production of their website. Open it up and get the membership participating in the 80%+ of real estate sales that begin online.
There's a reason business relationships need constant evaluation: in this case, someone shuld start linking the poor online satisfaction of realtors with the company that overwhelmingly provides the service, and that is MOVE.
i've got five buck, where do i invest? do i get dividends?
What boggles my mind is that we are all in agreement - we (the REALTOR.com consumer) are dissatisfied with their service and their strategy and they are doing NOTHING about it. It's worse than a dictatorship.....might as well move back to Venezuela with Chavez.
there are a great many yukie mucks from NAR that support the MOVE practices... and of course, NAR spends money ($1 million +) to promte the name "Realtor" and includes promotions for Realtor.com in the budget.
So NAR is not only losing control of the site, but is subsidizing the company directly with advertising dollars.
Many of the Board at the time also received shares in the company,but that is a separate matter. And presidents of one move over to the other, and then have stock scandals with teh SEC and DOJ...
This issue has been addressed many times on other lists and blogs, and the mucky mucks always defend it without a flinch...
That is NAR... incest is best, as they said in the Rocky Horror Picture Show... and this is a prime example.
Ines
it's because they bombard us with those inane "well you need to do this or that" and they keep sending US back to do MORE work.
hey Realtor.com YOU GO BACK AND MAKE IT BETTER!
Um,
Jonathan---where are you?
Don't you think you should moderate/join in the conversation???????
Great post Jonathon! I agree with what you've said about how expensive they are relative to what they offer and I think your recommendation and assessment are spot on! This really is a great value proposition right now.
Jonathan and all,
The history here kind of "explains" the current situation. Way back in the dark ages of the internet, NAR traded "lifetime" rights to use the name Realtor.com to Homestore for what today would be essentially be a bag of beans.
This link posted on Saul Kleins's blog shows how it happened and why NAR can't take it back from Move.com, without paying a ton to Move
And here I was thinking about joining R.com. Thanks for a great article and all the feedback.
Inertia is the tendancy of a body at rest to stay at rest.
Nothing will happen in this regard until everyone starts blogging, complaining, and drawing interest in the trades to the overwhelming dissatisfaction with MOVE.
I write the Online Marketing column for a few e news letters. Recently, I tried to inform the readerships about realtor.com and Top Producer being unfindable by Google and other search engines and the article was severely edited. No one wants to make Move angry--they control too much money, I guess!
there are a great many yukie mucks from NAR that support the MOVE practices... and of course, NAR spends money ($1 million +) to promte the name "Realtor" and includes promotions for Realtor.com in the budget.
So NAR is not only losing control of the site, but is subsidizing the company directly with advertising dollars.
Many of the Board at the time also received shares in the company,but that is a separate matter. And presidents of one move over to the other, and then have stock scandals with teh SEC and DOJ...
This issue has been addressed many times on other lists and blogs, and the mucky mucks always defend it without a flinch...
That is NAR... incest is best, as they said in the Rocky Horror Picture Show... and this is a prime example.
I find most people don't even know how to spell "REALTOR" correctly.
The spend so much money marketing and promoting a name that:
a) most people can't spell
b) conjures up negative connotations
I don't understand why sometimes we have to input the graphic/capcha and sometimes we don't. What's going on here? Personally I will be glad when it gets abolished.
What's Realtor.com? : )
I have never seen an agent bragging about how beneficial and profitable their realtor.com site has been. In fact, the tactics of this site is so distasteful that it makes many think that abandoning the association altogether might be a good idea. As useful sites - that help both the consumer and the licensed agent to get what they need - increase and gain foothold, there is a definite risk of revolt. Listen NAR! Your members are talking and the news is not good!
Ok so this little "lovely" was delivered to my e-mail box again
http://www.realtor.org/RMODaily.nsf/pages/News2008072806?OpenDocument
My feeling is, if you need the founder of Trulia to tell you to take a good primary photo, you have more worries than which company should be getting SEO.
I foolishly spent $1400 with realtor.com and wasited my money. I didn't get one lead from my campaign. It also cost me another $400 for the banners I had made to work on realtor.com
Another lesson in life and money out the window.
Great post and comments. Boy have I had my head in the sand. The renewal from realtor.com is still in my inbox and I just haven't seen any benefit from it for two years. Guess I know what I'll do now...nothing. It sort of reminds me of pointless paper advertising...sellers just love it but nothing comes of it!
I'm always so frustrated when sellers call me to say they don't like this or that about their listing on Realtor.com. They are surprised to find that I have no control over that listing's content and appearance. ActiveRain puts them to shame.
Jon, I've found that the lack of any guarantee and the pricing Move ask is absurd! Who would spend the money on their advertising, thay can;t substantiate any refeerals through the site and make no promises whatsoever. Who ever heard of such a thing from a so call "reputable company"? Like many of our MLS's shouldn't the goal of our associations be to support and assist it's members? It's seems more and more that these are business plans rather than "TRUE Associations" for the benefit of members. I've joiner our "MLS & Technology Committee" to try and institute change from within, like all politics though... it's increasingly Political!
I never look at the iste nor do I hear any of my cleints ever mention it. its an almost non issue in this market. They were not innovation and rested on the relationship and under estimated the realtors disire to give them money. The return just was not there as others began to carve out niches in the market. They had almost no competitors 12 years ago when I started and now they have hundreds.
This is so informative and helps me understand the politics so much better. It sounds like you might have more of a struggle with R.C in your areas. I don't hear too many complaints here, but maybe it's this region...I'm sure the bigger problems will inevitably surface. Thanks for a great post!
NAR is still stuck in the 20 Century. I really thought they would get a wake up call when so many Realtors dropped out over the last two years, but apparently that does not raise any concerns with them. This is not the time to sit back and wait and outsource. The need to be way more aggressive.
From years of paying extra for enhanced listings and featured listings... the final straw was paying an outrageous price for the zip code I specialize in and having such lackluster results I demanded a refund. After two months of complaining up the chain all the way to Alan Dalton, he was nice enough to provide a partial refund.... and they have not seen a dollar from me since. (Now going over two years.)
What did I realize? That it never made a difference to begin with! Save your money and invest it into your OWN website and the ROI is far superior and far more beneficial to your selling clients. There is NO statistic that shows enhanced or featured listings sell any faster then normal listings.... That goes with Trulia, Zillow or any other third party site.
NAR needs to take it back to stop the fleecing of REALTORS who have bought into the propoganda that they have to spend extra money for better results...
Great post. I spent a year arguing with Realtor.com that I was not getting any results from their exorbitant fees and got better results from the "free" sites. They told me to be "patient". I don't even go there anymore. Keep up the pressure.
Jon - This post is very thoughtful, and is really something that has been in the back of most technical realtors for a long time. If move was doing what it should for realtors, I wouldn't have a Point2agent site. I have never spend one penny on Realtor.com, and I don't expect to start any time soon. I didn't know that Top Producer was owned and operated by the same company, but it makes sense now. User friendly is not something that has ever been used to describe it. I have am much happier without it.
Hey JW, why don't you run for office? You are so passionate at what you do that it shows in your personality, if you were to bring these issues into the political arena you would make an impact / change.
I vote for JW for our next NAR president. Why not, if real estate is moving forward in online media, why not have you run since you're one of a few that has changed the way realtors do business online.
Trust me, I will be blogging about this very soon.
In a nutshell, JW for NAR president!
Well let's see......I've been a REALTOR(R) for about 12 years and have probably been to realtor.com less than 5 times. It has zero impact on my business. It is amazing how a site that's supposedly so large doesn't even show up on a Googe search!!
Should NAR make a move on MOVE? I just don; know. It would be a good thing to take control of realtor.com but only if they hire the right guys to make it what it can be.
RainMaker...
This comment is a park, read and learn zone.
As far as I know parking is still free in the rain :)
TLW...ROAR!
NAR does not need to buy the R . com. Instead, IF MLSs stop allowing their listing to be placed there, and/or if agents stopped allowing their listing to be placed there, it would be less than useful to consumers. With no use, value decreases, and the $100 milion + investors have spent on it would not have to be "paid" by NAR to recover it.
Less than 1/2 of all licensees in the US are a member of ANY MLS. Our approach shouldn't be "realtor dot com doesn't help my business", and should be "why do consumers want to use an incomplete site?" My company page has more complete, better, local information (capegroup.com) than the big R does and with many fewer clicks to get it.
If we stop feeding them content, our sites wil be found more easily by the search engines.
In the meantime, use REindex.com - it is free for any listing agent that display their own listings on their own site.
I had a customer call my office today and question why her 700k home was no longer on Realtor.com. A friend had contacted her to see if she had sold or if she had taken it off the market. After a little investigation we discovered 26 listings had left the site. After contacting Realtor.com we discovered they are having problems with a MLS merge and were aware of the problem and working on a resolution. They of course didn't think this was information I might like to know before my customers started calling.
I wish I could say it was the first time I have had a problem. I have spent a large amount of money with them for years as I have found it to be a good source of business in my market. I just wish they treated me like they cared about my business. Unfortunately, it has been my worst experience with any supplier I have.
the really sad part is, they don't care what we think....
NAR's job should be to serve its membership and I agree that currently realtor.com does not serve realtors as well as it can. My experience as a realtor and as trainer and coach is one that finds that money spent on realtor.com produces far fewer results then money spent indepently. This should not be the case. Realtor.com should be a place where members can advertise with results not have their hard earned money added to corporate profits.
I'ts no surprise to see so many dissatisfied customers of REALTOR.com. Compared to other markets, they are overcharging realtors for services that should be free seing that realtors already pay dues, but moreover, these services should be free simply due to the fact that competitors offer it for free. It should be noted however, that most people who have no clue where to go for listings do end up going to realtor.com before others due to keywords such as:
These are just a few examples where they show up first on google. Overall as mentioned, realtors should be getting more for their money from NAR.
Wow...you guys are right...realtor.com should be free...the NAR should take it back...uh huh, that would work. You people obviously have no idea what it costs to run a site like Move, or Realtor.com do you? Do you have any idea how much storage it takes to hold all your blurry, pointless pictures of half a bathroom? And Brenda...you yourself said it's a good source of business for your market, and a CLIENT called you asking where her house was. Imagine that, Jane Q. Public using realtor.com! That's what you guys are really afraid of, isn't it...technology and progress putting you out of business. They don't need you guys to drive them around in your cadillac and gold jackets anymore, that's scary...while you make thousands of dollars for slapping a sign on their front yard, kicking your feet up, complaining about how expensive move is, while you wait for your commission check...
As to why they didn't call you because of an MLS feed problem? Do you really think they have the time or resources to contact every realtor, to tell them that there may have been a problem with a process, and they're working on it, and it will be resolved shortly? You talk about adding costs....
There's a reason why realtor.com is the #1 website, and it's not because of you agents buying featured listings...it's because the public wants to search on their own, they don't need you to handhold them anymore, and they have the most comprehensive listing database out there now.
Why do realtors use realtor.com to enhance their listings? it's not to make them sell quicker...it's to give the sellers the impression that you're actually doing something to market their homes...so they can see the pretty yellow banner, at the top of the search page, and say...wow, my realtor really does care...that's the real reason, isn't it? to keep the sellers happy? so they don't go to fsbo.com and realize they can cut you our of the deal and save thousands?
c'mon people...can you really tell me that on a million dollar house, you do SOOOO much more work than on a 100,000 house? that your efforts are THAT much more, to warrant a 10X jump in commission? uh huh, you want to talk about over priced...let's look at the entire realtor scam in general...buyers and sellers do most of your work these days anyway, you know it, we all know it. So for you to sit there in your plush office, and complain about 'oooohhh, they're so expensive....I don't use them anymore'...who really gives a rats behind? just go back to your hum-drum lives, and quit wasting time and energy complaining about somthing you really know very little about!!
thanks, all y'll have a great day now, y'hear?
:)
Don't you just love gutless blind postings that exorciate everyone but the writer?
Realtor.com hs to "pay for lots of storage for your half a bathroom photo?" Just how much does space on a hard drive cost these days? Let's see, one can buy 160GB back up hard drives for $100, so I guess that half a bathroom photo might take up .00001 of that capacity, so that would be a fair charge of 1/10th of a cent monthly. The rest must be profit?
The anonymous castigtor misses the point: Move.com does not deliver fair value to agents. Move.com is NOT the most popular place to look for homes; that belongs to Google. The vast majority of visitors to Realtor.com are other realtors.
92% of Internet buyers (who comprise 84% of all buyers) choose their agent with a search engine. Not a portal, like realtor.com, but a search engine. Until everyone wakes up and smells that rose, the waste of resources on realtor.com will likely continue unabated, even though NAR admits that 93% of all agents aren't happy with their website's production. NAR does not own Realtor.com. Move does. NAR gets a kickback on every subscriber, that's all.
Insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result. DO you want to sell houses online? Get a good template site, hire good SEO to get it found, use soft lead capture and incentives to get people to register so you can farm them, call them instantly whenever they sign in. That's it, folks, with a few minor additions, like a welcoming homepage and full access to listings, good virtual tours, and IDX. There is no magic formula, it is just paying attention to those things that propel one to the front of online marketing.
Hi Mike,
I agree with you, however being in the real estate business you know about fair value. Seller's don't set prices, the buyers do...as long as people will pay 4 bucks for a gallon of gas, that's what they'll sell it for. When demand goes down, so does the price. Same with houses, with services, with good SEO's...with realtor.com. If people stop buying, they'll have to do something. if people feel they don't get a good value for their investment, then by all means, they should go somewhere else, but they shouldn't complain about your own choices, nobody is forcing them to use any particular website, real estate agent, or website designer.As far as the price of storage goes, I agree, the price of a hard drive is cheap. The kind that you might back up your personal PC with. but to deliver search results and images to 20,000 customers hitting a website at the same time with a hard drive your mom bought for you at best buy, it's just not going to happen. at the risk of sounding like another geek, there's a reason companies like IBM, EMC, NetApp, and HP have enterprise-class storage arrays, with thousands of disks, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Do some research, let's see how many 160GB usb drives google uses to run its website. :) I agree with you on the no magic formula, just get back to basics, as it were, and you'll go far. As far as gutless blind postings go, I guess I'll post another one, but hopefully mine doesn't sound as confrontational.
Mr. Anonymous
Dear Mr. Anonymous;
Thanks for your well thought response. I know you know that I was being tongue-in-cheek with my allegory; Google has over 500,000 dedicated servers to handle the 85 Billion inquires they receive monthly. Realtor.com has 7 million page view monthly--page views, not visitors--and that does require real hardware, no doubt, but we have three million with just a few dedicated servers and no major issues.
As to your comments on pricing, I think they are right on: the current nosedive in pricing, however, I view as a long term good thing. When we are repeatedly bombed by data telling us that 85% of the residents of a typical town could not afford to buy their home there today, that says to me that prices were too high. We all know some of the reasons why, but my view is that--once we get through this unbelievable REO/foreclosure backlog, we'll have a more stable and lucrative market with realistic prices that will gradually rise again. I see that as a good thing.
The bad thing is the pain that everyone is going through right now. About the only good thing that can be said about that is that perhaps the glut of real estate agents will disappear and it can become a real career, again, for the dedicated and professional agent.
But, back to realtor.com. An institution that can only cite 7% of its clients as satsified with the production of the product would not succeed or live if not propped up by the exclusive agreement with NAR. Unless agents wake up, the disparity between those succeeding online and those failing will remain ridiculously large: 93% failing vs 7% succeeding (NAR's own stats). Even a monopoly should be able to deliver at lest 50% success, and Move isn't doing that for NAR members, in my opinion. Nothing will change until people start voting with their ad dollars and begin leaving realtor.com out of their marketing strategy. They'll come around fast were that to occur.
Ah yes, but I believe your numbers may be somewhat misleading? ...you say the NAR says only 7% of it's members are satisfied with their website. But how many of those members actually have websites on realtor.com. I'm a NAR member, and I have my own site, as do most of the people I know...Do you have numbers on how many NAR members there are and how many of those have websites through REALTOR.com? Just curious.
Perhaps a better statistic to find out, to better illustrate your point, would be how many REALTORS with websites on REALTOR.com are satisfied?
thanks,
Mr. Anonymous
Well, you seem quite well versed about realtor.com, so you should know that there are no hard numbers on what you ask, only NAR's numbers about websites and realtor disatisfation. But I can tell you this: one of the most important things to suceed online is being able to be found when people search online for homes, as they do over 870 million times monthly JUST ON GOOGLE! Pages on realtor.com are all subdomains--as are most realtor.com and topproducer sites--and they are not even indexed by Google. Draw your own conclusions, but let's agree to disagree and remember that if NAR could cancel their deal with Move, they probably would! Who wouldn't pay a lot more than 25% of revenues to have the exclusive for America's realtors? Who doesn't think Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL wouldn't out do each other to land that franchise?
Even though I cannot tell who is saying what, (when did we go anonymous on AR?) I really appreciate the exchange. I dropped Realtor.com long ago, no return on my investment period!!!
Is the time still right? More right? I posted a poll on my blog... Missy reminded us of this on EmMee Hill's post...
Wow, what a discussion. As many others, i spent money on them before, and I so not do it anymore.
But taking it from whoever runs it and giving back to NAR does make me very optimistic. I have very little trust in NAR, and somehow I think this will be the same or worse crap just under a different roof. Both business models look the thing of the past.
NAR is still alive because for the majority of the country you have to be their member to have access to MLS. Unbundle,a nd NAR will lose a lot of membership. They are a dinosaur, so operating Realtor.com would not change much.
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