Dare I even say this in the presence of other REALTORS? What can I say about the NAR convention? I've never been to one, so I guess it was an accurate glimpse of the state-of-the-industry.

Honestly, I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. For 100 years, NAR has been doing a good job creating and maintaining industry standards, and they've created the REALTOR brand, of which I am proud to be associated with as it does endeavor to provide superior client experience.

That said, this organization is old. And seriously behind the times, it seems. 95% of the people I met in Las Vegas were good people running their businesses in very traditional ways, working hard to make their clients happy. This is admirable, but with all the inefficiencies I see behind the scenes, there's this constant, gnawing feeling that this industry can be done better.

How? I'm not sure. But it eats at me constantly, and I want to figure it out. I want the magic answer. 83% of buyers and sellers are online? No problem, says the average agent, it's covered, I have a template website. Blog? What's that, and why should I care?

Here's a nice wrap-up assembled by Active Rain colleague John Novak, so check it out. The presentations by Seth Godin and Scott Bedbury, not to mention the Active Rain party, made the whole event worthwhile. Too bad I missed the Google/Zillow session... apparently the hordes became hostile with its consumer-centric presenters.

And FYI, in case you weren't aware, Nicaragua is the new hot-spot for US real estate investment.

As for the rest of the sessions I attended, they were a nice refresher on classic sales practices designed to grow my business in the old-school, usual ways. But in the end, I much prefer the smaller conferences like Inman... that's where the future of real estate truly makes its first appearances.

The Active Rainers in this community are way ahead of the game in terms of tapping into those 83% of consumers looking online before they call anyone... but what does this mean for the future of real estate?

I’ve run dual Realtor.com banners for the past two years. In my market they tell me there are only 10 slots, so when I had the opportunity to pick up two of them, the maximum allowed any one agent, I did.

The first year they cost my a little over $11,000. It was a set fee, and I paid up front rather than monthly to realize a few hundred dollars in savings. With a top banner and a skyscraper that run simultaneously, I owned 20% of the market.

Why on Earth would I pay that much for web banners? Because 80% of people shopping for homes are online, Realtor.com was the number one search site by a wide margin, and I had a strong website presence to point to. So I tried it.

At the end of the first year, they told me I had received something like 738,000 impressions, but they could not tell me how many click-throughs. This lack of data was surprising given that it was 2006. For $11,000, you’d think they could provide at least a monthly report.

In looking at my own web stats, the results were not impressive. I was getting about as many from Realtor.com as I was from my monthly report on Realty Times, which only costs me $299 per year in participation fees.

But I started getting busy with clients, a few of them said they’d seen me on Realtor.com, so when it came time to renew, I squirmed.

People sometimes get fuzzy about exactly how they find you on the web. They click, here, there, wherever, and suddenly they’re on your website. I had established a strong local blog and wanted to promote that, so with much consternation, I put another $12,000 on the credit card in the name of running a consistent image campaign online.

At the end of year two, they told me I had received something like 488,000 impressions, a 34% decline. That actually tracks with slowing conditions in my marketplace, and while dramatic, it wasn’t a total surprise. But this year they were able to give me a teensy bit of click-through data (yes, if I had more time I could go and get it off my own web server, but for $12,000, I expect a little service.) 

The bottom line? They tell me I’ve been paying $9.50 per click.

Canceling both these puppies for next year was a no-brainer. When I can get quality, contextual ad click-throughs from Google for 75 cents because I know how to game the system? Why would I ever pay $10 bucks a click? I live in Reno, not New York City.

The other gotcha is that somehow my top ad banner was permitted to use the word MLS for two years. I guess that’s not allowed anymore, so I was going to have to change the ad and take that word out.

Out of curiosity, I asked which banner had been performing better, thinking that I might keep one for $6,000 (this was before I learned my true click-through cost). Given some general website design principles, I thought surely it would be the skyscraper at the right, because people tend to click on the right more than the top, and Realtor.com charges slightly more for it. Surprisingly, it was the top banner, the one with the word MLS in it. MLS access is apparently a very strong word combo in the mind of the consumer.

So I’m done with Realtor.com banners. Way overpriced for what they deliver, they did serve a purpose in my overall web strategy, and now I have more than enough traffic from Google thanks to my blogging efforts.

My suggestion to Realtor.com would be to ditch the expensive no-data static banners in favor of dynamic, changeable contextual text advertising like what Google Ads offer. One of the most valuable things about this method of advertising is that you can experiment with several ad variations, discover which work the best, set your own bids to budget, and basically get a customized set of ad campaigns for a whole lot less.

But I must say, their lack of reporting is appalling. How hard is it to send a monthly report with impressions, click-throughs and cost per click? When I renewed in 2006 I asked if they could do this, and the sales guy assured me that it was in the works. Yeah, right. Never saw that one.

Are they worth it? In most cases, I’d say probably not.

So here I am, working my first real week back from vacation. And for whatever reason, two potential sellers with homes in the $2 million plus range were anxious to meet. One had a beautiful custom home in Arrowcreek with a gorgeous view and tasteful personal touches, while the other was a very large spec home in Somersett with some beautiful attributes, and a few, um, issues.

Seller number one has the best trimmed house I’ve ever seen in Arrowcreek, with superior golf and city views and a good floor plan, though too big for most buyers. Of course the owner is totally proud of this home as he built it himself for his family. It is lovely, and the craftsmanship top notch, but the stone balusters and light woods won't appeal to everybody.

After the grand tour, we sit down on the back veranda, and I lay out the market in a series of spreadsheets. The bottom line? This market is hostile for sellers, and in this price range, your chance of selling is about 1 in 70, and the only way you’ll ever sell is to be the best value, as in price it low. Well, I could see he wasn’t into that as he hardly looked at the numbers I had so carefully assembled and analyzed for him.

Then came the fateful, “I don’t have to sell...” So I suggested that maybe he shouldn’t. Now’s not a good time. There’s so much inventory out there, if you don’t need to sell in the next couple of years, don’t do it. I walked away totally relieved that they had decided to wait, because there is no way I could sell his house for the amount he wanted in this market.

I don’t know if you all realize this or not, but when an agent takes a listing, the agent pays for all the marketing costs. The brokers pay for little or nothing. That means that when I take on a multi-million historic home, I’ll be investing up to five figures in marketing costs, on the belief that I can sell it and for the added exposure it brings. But if I can’t sell it, I’m hosed. Any listing I take, spend money promoting, and ultimately fail to sell is a business loss.

That’s why brokers yammer on agents to get listings. It’s no skin off their backs because we front the costs and do the legwork. Joe Public’s home might actually sell, which is the big win, but it also brings the agent marketing exposure and maybe some buyers on the side. As long as agents have lots of listings, at least half will probably sell since the national failure rate was around 50% last I looked. Though in our market, I suppose you could say it’s now 90% since only 10% or less of standing inventory is selling through.

Seller number two built a super-sized spec home in Somersett with front-row tract home views across the canyon. In some ways it’s a very nice home, but with notable flaws that any buyer in this price range would pick up right away. There is no way this seller will ever get the high-two-millions price desired, and I honestly don’t think breaking even is possible at this point. I’m guessing this house will be for sale forever, if the seller can even find a Realtor to represent it.

Which brings me to another interesting dynamic I’ve encountered this week... gifting listings.