After all the chatter emerging out of Midyear, there really is no shortage of topics to think and talk about. There is merely the shortage of time. But I thought this topic needs to be addressed, and I’m quite surprised none of the usual commentariat has tackled it.
At some point, we are going to have to address the issue of pocket listings and what that means for the industry, no? Let’s get started.
Let’s just say that Internet access where I am is shaky, at best. So I’ll try to keep this as brief as possible.
A couple of interesting things happened today at the MLS Policy Committee Meeting. I’m sure the full report will be available after Midyear, but these are my initial brief thoughts.
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For anyone who doesn’t know, which is unlikely amongst my readers, Gahlord Dewald is the Founder, CEO, and Janitor of Thoughtfaucet. He’s also one of the hosts for the Trialogues podcast.
Because we’ve been missing doing these, as Matthew Shadbolt, our dear friend and Trialogues partner, is temporarily out of commission, we decided to get together to talk about a couple of issues that Gahlord has been working on for a while. He’s one of the experts on the topic of social media, of course, but he’s also been doing a great deal of work on canonical tags and authorship tags. Both are topics that have been much in the news and discussions within real estate, because of the impact of both on SEO and on how Google would treat listing content.
Many thanks to Gahlord, and as always, thanks to you all.
-rsh
Not that there’s anything truly new under the sun when it comes to the old warhorse topic of listing syndication, but… something did occur to me while wading through this nugget on Inman News’ Facebook Page.
Is it possible that so much of the discussion is confused because of the word “data”?
For example, Saul Klein of Poin2 writes:
It is time for the Industry to “take back its future.” It is time to look seriously at data rights and data licensing. It is not too late.
Whatever you might think of Sauls cri de coeur, what came to my mind was… we’re using the language of industries like music and retail to describe something that is fundamentally different, no?
For example, WalMart collects all sorts of data about its customers. It uses that data for massive analytics to make decisions that drive billions of dollars in sales. It protects that proprietary data in heavily fortified data centers, and it does not share the data with anybody (as far as I know). There are tons of companies whose business involves the collection of data, which they then sell to various customers.
Actual content companies — book publishers, music companies, Hollywood, etc. — create stuff that people will pay to read/hear/watch. I suppose a book is “data” in a sense, since it’s all digital bits and bytes living in the Cloud these days, and yeah, violating the copyright of a publisher is a no-no.
But when it comes to “listing data”, aren’t we talking about advertisements?
I mean, yes, just because something is an ad doesn’t mean copyright law doesn’t apply. Of course it does. I recognize that the brokers or the MLS or the photographer or whoever created the listing owns copyright, has data rights, can license those rights, and so on and so forth. There’s no legal difference between a listing and a retail point-of-sale data stream.
But isn’t there a practical difference?
“Listing data”, after all, is the advertisement of a property for sale. The broker owns the copyrightable parts of it, yes, but… should we completely ignore the fact that if the property were not for sale, the actual sellers would never have consented to the creation of the “listing data package” in the first place? As far as the seller is concerned, the “listing data” exists for the sole purpose of selling his damn house.
Which means that the issue of “listing data rights” and “listing data licensing” ought to be rephrased as “advertisements of homes for sale rights” and “advertisements of homes for sale licensing” for the purpose of precision. If those more precise terms sound faintly ridiculous… there’s probably a reason for that.
When I think in those terms, the whole syndication thing isn’t about data rights or data licensing at all, but about effective and ineffective advertising. If channel X or method Y is effective advertising, helping the seller achieve the purpose for which the “listing data” was created in the first place (i.e., sell the house), then… well, what is the problem here? If channel Z or method Q is ineffective, then by all means, stop.
The listing agent or broker can explain to the seller why she chose not to use XYZ website or method. As long as the seller is cool with it, all is good.
Consider this:
Seller: “Hey, I really want you to send singing telegrams about my house.”
Agent: “Yeah, that’s like a really great idea, said nobody ever, and I would never waste time and money on something so stupid.”
Seller: “Oh, okay, sorry. You’re the expert.”
vs.
Seller: “Hey, I really want you to send singing telegrams about my house.”
Agent: “Well, I don’t want to have singing telegram companies making money off of my listing data, and they haven’t executed the proper listing data license with me.”
Seller: “What the hell are you talking about?”
When I consider the fact that “listing data” is actually an advertisement of a property for sale, created by people who are supposedly fiduciaries of the seller, who were given the right to create that “data” for the sole purpose of effecting the sale of the seller’s property, the whole notion of “data licensing” starts to smell.
The whole “I can’t stand that Zillow is making money off my listing” thing is… sort of incomprehensible. The seller didn’t allow you to list his home so that you can generate a bunch of leads or worry about which advertising companies are making money and how. He allowed you to list his home — and to create the advertising “data” about it — so you can sell his home quickly and efficiently.
So once again, I return to my original advice on the topic:
If you don’t like using singing telegrams, don’t use it to advertise the listing. If you don’t like printing gorgeous 4-color books, don’t do it. If you don’t like doing open houses, by all means, don’t do them. And if If you don’t like ZTR, don’t advertise there.
Why so complicated? It could be because of the terminology: “listing data”.
Confusion arises from imprecision. Words matter.
-rsh
The Pacific Northwest, where denizens created a religion out of worshipping coffee to overcome the gloom of the rainy months, has somehow become the mecca for technology-based innovation in the real estate industry. Everyone knows about Zillow, of course. Most folks know about Redfin. MarketLeader, and its portal, RealEstate.com are also in the Seattle area and made noise recently within the industry.
Far fewer people know about or think about Estately. But it’s time to give them some thought, because they’re quietly proving out a business model in the ongoing portalization of real estate that’s worth considering.
The first Triple Crown Winner in 45 years… and he bat .330
Welcome to another edition of an annual tradition, in which I go back and grade myself on my predictions made at the start of this year. My track record so far:
As was the case last year, I’m hoping to be wrong more often than not, because my 2012 Predictions, written on January 2, 2012, were kind of on the doomy and gloomy side of things. Let’s take a look, shall we?
Photograph: Amy Hahn (no relation to your truly)
Yes, I know, I know. Nobody likes a “I told you so”. It’s obnoxious and childish. But… I just can’t resist! So forgive your humble scribe as I do a victory lap around the Tree of Nostradamus.
About what, you ask?
Well, it appears that RealEstate.com is relaunching as a lead generation website using a very particular model of data harvesting that has various folks up in arms. To take as one example, Brian Boero over at 1000watt:
So, you have what I’m calling a “paper brokerage” leveraging IDX to grow their “lead-to-close marketing system.”
It gets richer:
Unlike Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com, which have spent gazillions negotiating for voluntary access to listings from MLSs and brokers, Market Leader, by virtue of its brokerage licenses, simply grabs the IDX feed.
I’m surprised that Brian is surprised. This was so obvious that I’ve made it one of my Seven Predictions for 2012. And the implications of this is also obvious: End of IDX As We Know It.
Making Sense... Out of Nothing At All... (apologies to Air Supply)
I had to interrupt my series on Redfin 3.0 and what it might mean for brokerages because parts of the RE.net just blew up over the past day or two. AgentGenius (AGBeat?) reports that there is a dispute going on in Austin, Texas, between a group of brokers and agents (who mostly serve the luxury market) and the local MLS about IDX policy. Although this sort of thing was inevitable in my view, I take no pleasure in getting my Nostradamus points.
I have written that one cannot be anti-syndication but be pro-IDX, since the two are actually the same thing, intended to serve the same purpose. Reasonable people disagree, and that’s wonderful; we advance through debate and discussion.
But reading through the AGBeat post and the comments there, I think there’s a lot more of an emotional response than reasoned discussion going on. I thought I should make a small (okay, large and lengthy) attempt to try to clear up some of the mess so that we can focus on the core issues in the debate.
Oh jeez, not another post on syndication and IDX...
It’s late, and I’m fairly certain that this horse I’m about to pound on some more is long since departed for greener pastures in the hereafter… but hey, what the hell, right?
So by now all readers of Notorious ROB have seen the latest developments in the Syndication Serenade:
This carousel is making me dizzy!
The responses from the peanut gallery are… well, predictable. You have the lamentations of the Transparency Mafia, the chortling of the KillZillThrill Cult, various declarations of how bass-ackwards the real estate industry is, and people who just love that the MLS is “fighting back”, and so on and so forth.
And yet, no one appears to be picking up on the most important trend here. So let me beat this dead horse one more time: brokers, REALTORS, vendors, Romans, friends, countrymen… it’s time to start making your plans for the post-IDX world.
The average denizen of the RE.net cybercafe — that includes you, since you’re reading this on a blog — knows that the hot topic du jour is syndication. I wrote about it here and here already, but frankly, have been talking about this issue for quite some time. And influential bloggers like Jay Thompson and Kris Berg have weighed in, and Facebook groups are all over this issue.
And I’ve gotten a couple of phone calls, a number of emails, and Facebook messages and such debating my one critical issue with me. I wrote that the issue here isn’t syndication, which is more or less dead in its current form, but IDX. And that one cannot be against syndication but for IDX. Jay Thompson agreed, while Kris Berg (to take but one example) disagreed.
So I’d like to explore this connection more, to clarify why the distinction between syndication and IDX does not, and cannot, hold. And what that then means for the future of the industry, by connecting a couple of dots.