Would it be helpful for Realtors to have a database of every home in the US?
Should we Realtors pay to provide the database of all homes (NAR/Gateway), pay a commercial provider (Experian/First American), or get it free from a Real Estate Search Engine (Zillow)?
Would it be helpful for all home buyers and sellers to have a database of every home for sale? Will home buyers and sellers get it for free, before we pay millions for it?
Experian, through their affiliate First American, is collecting a database of all homes in the US and selling the data to the likes of Zillow and many local Realtor Associations (like my GRAR in Rochester, NY).
Zillow will soon have a database and Webpage/Website for every home in the US.
The NAR has an initiative, Gateway, where they plan to have a database of all the homes in the US. One part of Gateway has the NAR assigning a Website to every US home, like Zillow and Experian already do (and your County should).
But the NAR will not open up their/our future database to all home buyers and sellers. The NAR won't make more money to lower our dues and our contributions, by selling ads on each Website. The NAR will fight the DOJ, the FTC, the Discounters and all the Search Engines (AGAIN) to keep their/our data private.
Syms, the discount clothes retailer, has a saying: "An educated consumer is our best customer." The NAR has no such motto, slogan or vision. NAR's thinking is back with our old listing books, stamped "Confidential" all over them. If we stay with their/our narrow mindset, we'll have the future of the print Yellow Pages and our print listing books. Did you recycle yours?
Realtor.com, takes our listing data, charges us for showing it (and extra for upgrades), and presents it to visitors. Google Base, Yahoo Real Estate, MSN Real Estate, Zillow and Trulia take our listing data, give us free advertising and steal all the potential ad revenue from the listing, from Realtor.com, from the NAR and from us.
Google let the genie of keeping data hidden out of the bottle long ago. Google's stated vision is: "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". Can't we take a page from the Google Playbook? Or are we stuck with the pages of our old listing books?
Are you betting on Google or NAR/Realtor.com/Move? Where would you put your/our/NAR's money? Put your retirement money on Move (aka HomeStore) and you'll be 401KO'ed.
The NAR will hit every Realtor with a $16 dues charge/increase this year to fund their Second Century Ventures Fund. I fear the fund will sponsor the same initiatives which caused us to loose both the control and the ad revenue from our listing data.
The Second Century Ventures Fund can't make it with 20th Century ideas. The NAR can't sell as much, when Google/Zillow et. al. are giving it away.
Three "Gateway Should's":
- The Gateway should be our front door into the 21st Century.
- The Gateway should be our transition into our Second Century.
- The Gateway should be the "Welcome Mat", and not the anagram, "Get Away" for home buyers and sellers.
If we're not careful, the Gateway to No-Where will be the Gate Way to Now-Here.
The NAR should lead and provide us and our clients with a Gateway to somewhere, not a Gateway to Nowhere.
Posted by: Cliff Jacobson
Adapt Or Die! Happy Searching.
WebHomeUSAblog: The Blog of Online Real Estate Marketing
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