And to bringing the thread of the conversation back to the original point, back at comment #60,
you said , ““they have the oldest and most respoected (sic) Code of Ethics in the Country” I guess the Harris Study and the Stanford Univesrity study and others missed that tidbit.”

I responded, ” If you are talking about surveys which focus on consumer perception of the industry, that’s not quite the same thing, and I would be glad to dialogue about that anytime. ”

And I think the point was made that the surveys you referred to did not address the issue of the Code.

And rather then “unreal”, I like to think of myself as “ethereal”

A sample of your experience is supposed to refute a national study performed by a prestigious university. I can only imagine how nutso that sounds outside the real estate agent box. I can’t even respond further. That is just an amzing statement to make. You’re unreal!

I said the study was wrong about brokers not adding value to the sale of property. I kept empirical records on FSBO sales for eyars as an active agent and sold the properties for an average of 10% more than the highest offer received by the consumer.

The second sentence reffered to the fact that if you believe that the public perception is low with the COE, imagine what it would be without –

But thanks for your good wishes

Wow…you say you are’nt a kool-aid drinker..okay…

This argument is obviously a dead issue. I wish you well with your continued support of the NAR.

I did manage to find a study from Stanford that also says that the use of a real estate broker does not impact the price a home sells for, though it does, according to their study, positively impact the time it takes to sell the home. I can tell you that study is just dead wrong based upon my experience. A different from study from Stanford did talk about the stauses of occupations here and in Sweden. But that had nothing to do with the respect that the Code of Ethics deserves, nor the imapct that it has had on the industry.

If you think that the public conception of a real estate broker is low, imagine what it would be if there weren’t so many people out there trying to do the right thing and make the industry a better place.

BTW I am not an NAR soldier, any more then I am a poster boy, a choir boy, nor standing on an altar – and I didn’t arrive at the conversation by being driven on a short yellow bus. Let’s keep it about the facts.

If you are talking about surveys which focus on consumer perception of the industry, that’s not quite the same thing, and I would be glad to dialogue about that anytime.

And yes I read the article – I try to keep my statements reliable -They quote “a recent study from Forrester Research” on Page 46 of the June 2, 2008 issue.

I don’t think they are saying this medium is not important, but that it is only one of a large number of social media, a number of which have emerged since their earlier article on Bloging in 2005. And the point I wanted to make is not that its not an important medium,( I’m here so I think its worth the time), but rather that when we write at our computers, wes ometimes forget that there is a larger world out there with different visions of the world – and that our perceptions of the impact we have may be over-rated. To bring that back to the point about NAR, I think if you knew more about the organization, and met people involved in it, you would be more appreciative of what they do as a trade organization, and how effective they and their staff are, and less generally critical (though perhaps not as controversial) .