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.
I have been asked for a recap of the events at NAR Midyear, but as I did not attend the Board of Directors meeting, and as I was busy doing other things, I felt it wasn’t really my place to give a recap.
It is, however, my place to offer some thoughts — high-level, unusual, and either prophetic or batshit crazy depending on your point of view — on what I heard, saw, felt, and read this past week. And my overall impression right now is that war within the real estate industry is inevitable. It is a question of when, not if, and how, not why.
The “why” has already been answered by the Greek historian Thucydides, who wrote:
The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable.
Similarly, the growth of the power of the Internet, and the alarm which this inspires in various circles in real estate, makes war inevitable. While I hope to see the minimum of conflict, and will work to make peace wherever I can, at this moment, I remain darkly fearful that we will need to fight in order to resolve the only question that matters: who shall rule?
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.
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.