Comments on: Will Realtor.com be Required to be a VOW? Should It?

By: I Swear. I Was Only Looking at Realtor.com! | Real Estate Opinion MAG - AgentGenius

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:19:27 +0000

[...] (as I’m beating a dead horse anyway) [...]

By: Laurie Manny

Laurie Manny — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:20:53 +0000

Lisa,

You are amazing! Thinking for a minute here………have I ever told anybody online that they were amazing before?………I don’t think so!

We can only hope that the rest of the industry has the best interests of the agents at heart as you obviously do.

Thank you for pioneering!

By: Lisa

Lisa — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:40:29 +0000

yes they should and I am my Chairman of the Board for our mls and we have now discontinued our mls rets feed to r.com and have now put them on our listhub list and our members can decide just like any other aggregator or vendor if they want their listings to go to r.com, not the board. Also, we had issues with the use of sold data going into Top Producer and then coming out into r.com as a market snapshot and confusion with our membership on this. We have had to ask r.com to stop doing many thing in the past, like selling ad space to non area realtor’s who were then taking those leads and referring them back to our membership and saying this broker in another board had exclusives for this zip code and our members couldn’t purchase the ad space. We cut them off then too! They did comply, but after many instances like this it is much easier to allow our membership to make that determination and to discuss with R.com their business practices. Now they get the same data as any other aggregator and our membership will be able through their IDX or VOW’s to display more information putting our members sites on the search engines.

By: Fred Romano

Fred Romano — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 02:33:40 +0000

We get tons of leads from Realtor.com but they all go direct to our sellers! When I was doing the “full serv” gig, I got lots of leads and turned quite a few into paying clients. It does work if you use it.

I think if you are serious and have a bunch of listings, it’s important to not only “showcase” them for your seller, but it’s a great way to meet buyers.

By: Paula Henry

Paula Henry — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 01:17:10 +0000

I like a good rant about Realtor.com as anyone, but I have a further question – should they have to play by the same rules as the rest of us?

Yes, they should!

By: Paula Henry

Paula Henry — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 01:15:22 +0000

Last week I had dinner with a broker friend and his wife. We were talking about R.com. Besides our “dislike” for r.com, the other factor (and most telling) we had in common – neither of us has received a lead from R.com. He quit paying for the premium service a couple of years ago.

So where do the leads go? I would like to know how many leads people actually receive from r.com.

If given the same benefits as R.com. no Realtor would have to compete with them on our own listings.

Todd – I hope we see some real change in November – I’m counting on it. And…thanks for your wise advice. If we quit allowing everyone else access, then buying back the leads and actually own the responsibility to market on our own sites, then……… we will have the freedom to operate our business more profitably.

By: Bob

Bob — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 05:16:40 +0000

“In my personal opinion, if I were a REALTOR, I would never pay Realtor.com, Trulia, Zillow, or any other lead generation company a dime to compete with me online. But that’s just me.”

Sage advice.

By: Todd Carpenter

Todd Carpenter — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 19:28:35 +0000

John Wake – I was just told that all the key elements of the deal are contained in the S1 filing that is required since Move is a public company. So I guess if you or someone else wanted to dig through that, they could.

By: Todd Carpenter

Todd Carpenter — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:33:36 +0000

“Nevertheless, anyone know what the contract with Move really says? A pdf of the contract would be nice for the membership to see. Is that too much to ask?”

I will ask around to see if it can be made public. I honestly don’t know. I do know that the contract is evergreen.

In my personal opinion, if I were a REALTOR, I would never pay Realtor.com, Trulia, Zillow, or any other lead generation company a dime to compete with me online. But that’s just me.

NAR’s near future focus is to provide tools that will help it’s members create a great user experience on their own web sites. Hopefully, the first of these tools will roll out this fall.

By: Joe Spake

Joe Spake — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:21:56 +0000

Jim, thanks for this post. I will never pay realtor.com another penny. The comment that stated Zillow and Trulia and many of the other RE sites provide much more FREE exposure is right on. Here’s a little exercise: Pretend you are a consumer and visit realtor.com, trulia, zillow, front door and others. The newer sites are cutting edge and consumer friendly, while realtor.com rests on its laurels, emphasizing push-type advertising.