At first glance, the biggest change in the new IDX Policy to be proposed at NAR Anaheim is that it removes entirely the section allowing Franchise IDX. The entire section is struck.
There will be much rejoicing in the anti-Franchise IDX partisans, and much gnashing of teeth in parts of New Jersey, Texas, Colorado, and elsewhere. Except that both the rejoicing and the gnashing will be premature. Naturally, there will be differences of opinion on the subject, but I do believe that much like royal succession, the death of the old king results immediately in the new king taking power.
The valuable lesson that the Franchises will have learned from this whole affair is not to ask NAR for permission before spending millions of dollars on a new approach to listing data. That does, of course, concern me, but let’s delve into the analysis first.
Business and travel have really kept me away from the blog, but… since I have a few days at home, I did want to write about the new IDX Policy that will be proposed at NAR Anaheim next month. I’ve managed to obtain a copy of the proposal through my sources (thank you guys, you know who you are!) and… there be some interesting things in it.
The big news, as many have already heard, is that the Franchise IDX policy will be repealed in its entirety. The overall thrust of the proposal appears to be one aimed at restoring the status quo ante. But the way the proposal goes about it is… interesting. Let’s dive in.
I’ve been traveling more or less nonstop for a couple of weeks, and busy as hell in any event, so I kind of missed the controversy around Redfin’s Scouting Report. I’d suggest heading over to Jay Thompson’s blog to get his thoughts on the product, and the various responses from the real estate industry to it. I don’t have a whole lot to add to the controversy.
But there are at least a few things that most of the commenters are missing on this controversy. I’m far more concerned, actually, about the responses to Scouting Report and what they say about the industry than about the Scouting Report itself.
I testify, cuz at the September dinner of the Wired Straits Social Club (kinda like a Houston-based Lucky Strikes, which I started in NYC), we discussed this issue at some length. And got something out of it.
I figured I’d share at least one insight from that with you.
Where I disagree is in the stance that I want to have a relationship with my Realtor.
I don’t.
In fact, I can’t even imagine it.
My argument is that I am not alone.
Unlike a lot of the general public, I have a high level of respect for your profession.
I know how hard you work.
I know how unappreciated many of the things you do are.
I know the stress and challenges that come along with earning a paycheck and paying your bills ONLY if you sell things.
I have met countless Realtors both in person and online that have blown me away with their sales ability, marketing savvy, brand building skills and digital media efforts.
While many would never put the career Realtor along side other careers like Doctor and Lawyer which require significantly more education, I would.
It still doesn’t make me want to have a relationship with you. (Emphasis in original)
Read the whole thing. And people say I stir the pot….
In any event, not being a real estate agent, I don’t have a whole lot to add. I don’t know if RE is or is not a relationship business. But I am a strat guy, a general commentariat talking head guy, and so on. And I did have some questions for Chris (and others) which I asked over on his blog. It seems to me that what I’m asking needs a bit more elaboration, so here we go.
By the way, I’m really, really liking Prezi. I expect to use it from now on for all presentations. Amazing that a web app is better than even Keynote….
"The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again."
It’s a hot Saturday morning here in Houston, and the sunlight is so strong you can almost feel the weight of it on your skin. Maybe it’s early onset of sunstroke, but I felt like musing on random things. Feel free to skip this post; it isn’t likely to be useful to anyone.
But I’m thinking about Google+ more, about Internet 2.0, and human beings. I wonder if the future — what we might term Internet 2.0 — will simply be a return of the walled gardens of the early days of the Internet. Things go in cycles. The Wheel of Time turns.
The other day, at the as-yet-unnamed Houston Social Media Club dinner, we got to talking about (what else) using social media for marketing purposes. I was reminded of that discussion checking out the new InmanNext post on Engagement by Michael McClure (that’s Mr. ProfessionalOne to you). [By the way, kudos to Chris Smith for getting InmanNext launched with its slate of writers, thinkers, and doers. Great job, Chris. I'll give you all the negativity over cocktails in San Francisco.]
Michael lays out generally solid advice, as he usually does. If you’re looking for guidance on how to use social networks generally, you could do a whole lot worse than his post. Now, Michael gives the following sage advice:
First, because success IRL is predicated heavily on the quality of the relationships you build. I won’t attempt to explain or justify this point, because I think most people know it to be true.
Second, because this same principle – the idea of success hinging on the quality of the relationships you build – is equally true in Social Media. Remember that people are people, whether online or offline.
Third, because there is a direct correlation between the quality of the relationships you have and the degree to which you successfully engage within those relationships.
For those of us who have been in or around this whole social media marketing thing over the past few years, all three points are rock solid. But on this blog, we don’t rest with rock solid conclusions — we push on into the frail forsaken frontier of foolish questions.
The foolish question of the day, then, is: What assumptions must we make in order to accept these three as rock-solid principles?
Put another way, those marketers who strongly advocate social media as the future of marketing must wrestle with, and answer, the challenge of Apple, Inc.
Even though this video looks like hundreds of other listing videos that real estate agents have been shooting for years now, with the help of companies like Real Estate Shows and WellcomeMat, that video, you see, constitutes journalism. It comes from the Wall Street Journal, from their Developments Blog, as part of a feature they call House of the Day. The entry above says:
The latest video is of Bob and Linda Glassman’s home on the market, fitting for the upcoming Independence Day holiday. It dates to the late 18th century and was built for the nephew of a man who led a battle at Concord in 1775.
The photos are “courtesy of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage”. Good for them, I say, to get so much free advertising for one of their listings, one priced north of $4m. Because those photos are exactly what you’d see in a listing.
Listen to the well-spoken narrator recite, “has a game room, an exercise room, and a two bedroom, one bathroom apartment”. She talks about the wonderful granite countertops in the kitchen, crown moldings, custom cabinetry, and the like. Sounds like a decent real listing agent, except she simply doesn’t sound all that excited about the property.
The reason, you see, is that this narrator is a journalist. It says so right at the start of the video: “Reporter: Sushil Cheema”. One assumes that this reporter is the same Sushil Cheema who has a BA in Anthropology and a MS in Journalism, both from Columbia University (our most-brilliant-President-ever’s alma mater) and has joined the WSJ in 2008 as a “multimedia reporter”. She must be narrating these not-so-great real estate ads through gritted teeth, telling herself that this sort of whoring is the price to do real journalism at some point in the future.
I yield to no man in my admiration for the WSJ as a newspaper and as a journalistic organization, but in this case, our friends have badly erred.
We need a rather sharper distinction between real estate journalism and real estate marketing these days, especially as real estate brokers and agents get better and better at producing “content”. WSJ and other outlets that purport to be “real news” organizations ought to stop bothering with these easy eye-candy pieces, and just link to well-produced videos by actual real estate professionals.
Journalists Wanted: Report on Real Estate Matters
I suppose I get why the WSJ Online wants to do these eye-candy pieces: they’re popular with the audience. When you’re in the business of selling eyeballs to advertisers, it doesn’t much matter what you’re producing. Look at the sheer number of celebrity real estate stories all over the Web, from Yahoo Real Estate to Zillow’s Blog to AOL Real Estate. Does the fact that some movie starlet is selling her $8.4 million doghouse in Beverly Hills make any difference to any of our lives? No. But we all care a great deal for some reason, living in the celebrity-obsessed culture of the 21st century America.
At the same time, perhaps now more than ever, given the depth of the crisis in real estate, given that the proximate cause of our Great Recession (now officially worse than the Great Depression!) was real estate, given the importance of real estate to every single family in the nation, and given how much stuff is going on in real estate… we need journalists to do that thing they call “reporting” on real estate.
What’s going on with multifamily financing? What’s happening inside the banks and the loan servicing companies that have been raked so harshly over the coals on Foreclosuregate? What happened to HUD’s gigantic PETRA program to change public housing as we know it?
Maybe it’s selfish of me, as a blogger, to want journalists to report news I can use, comment on, and discuss… but isn’t the job of a journalist ostensibly to report… you know… news? Get information the rest of us can’t, or won’t, and tell us what’s going on? Isn’t that value why they get paid a salary (meager as it may be) while we bloggers opine away for free?
A Suggestion to News Organizations
Lest it be said that all I do is complain, let me suggest a possible solution to the various newspapers, online news organizations, and the like as it comes to reporting on real estate.
Launch a new affiliate program that can help you get the eye-candy content you want to generate the eyeballs so you can pay the bills, while your Columbia-trained journalists get around to digging around for real information. Here’s how it would work.
First, offer “free” content publishing to the real estate industry. That listing video above could very easily have been produced by the listing agent (and for all I know, may have been). Create a program where real estate brokers and agents can send you content, and if it meets your approval, you will publish it. Yes, it’s an ad; yes, those people are just trying to expose a client’s listing to more people. And yes, they’d love it if their listing video got picked up by CNN.com for “House of the Day” or some such. But what of it? Just let your audience know that the video came from Such-and-such Realty, and they won’t mind.
Second, create an open-ended Contributor Program. Many a blogger would give you a permanent license to a post of theirs if a big major news company wanted to republish it. Give them some small percentage (15%? 10%?) of ad revenues generated by their post, in exchange for a permanent license. They get to keep the copyright jointly, so they don’t lose ownership (as they do in so many of the $100/post freelance blogger contracts), but you get content you only pay for upon performance. Many people would do this just to have the opportunity to have one of their posts up on WSJ.com or on Forbes or whatever. As long as you’re not obligated to publish everything someone writes, you have a nearly unlimited source of free content.
And many of those bloggers would go out of their way to blog about LeBron’s new house, or some celebutard’s overpriced beach house in Malibu.
Third, create an advertising affiliate platform. I just don’t know why newspapers and local TV with their professional ad sales teams don’t bother with this. Even at some crazy splits like 60/40, and at microscopic CPM’s, many a blogger would gladly embed a little advertising code for a few extra dollars a year.
With those three programs, perhaps your Real Estate Department can make enough money to keep paying your reporters to go out and write hard news stories. We all surely could use more of those, and less of what passes for journalism in real estate these days.
Or, ignore me and you go on with your bad self “reporting” on a listing video. See where that gets ya.
Image: Nick_T at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicholas_t/
One advantage of long road trips, particularly with say… one’s spouse, is the opportunity to talk without interruption. The car moving down the highway at 75 65 miles per hour (or whatever the legal speed limit is, officer) becomes a sort of isolation chamber without TV, without the kids demanding attention, and without any other distractions.
So it was on a recent trip to San Antonio. Having left the kids home with the grandparents (truth be told, we were sort of asked to leave so they can monopolize the time with The Spawns), Mrs. Notorious and I found ourselves with all this time to talk about things and catch up. Eventually, you run out of the domestic, immediately relevant, personal topics… so being that the Missus has a MBA and some twenty years experience in fashion retail, we got to talking about business.
She raised a complaint, and an ancillary point, that I thought was interesting enough to share, especially with the audience of this blog that tends to be almost all real estate people.
She thought that the retail industry needed to “go back to basics” in a profound and fundamental way.
I agree, but it’s worth understanding what “the basics” are.
