Realcomp II, a local Detroit MLS just got spanked pretty hard this week by the FTC. 

Apparenly, the FTC slapped them around a bit because they got caught restricting listings from local (discount) brokers who had agency exclusive listings. The FTC simply told Realcomp II to Publish the MLS Listings or else. 

It's the same problem we've heard countless times before ranging from our own trade association to CMLS pulling the same stunts. You cannot restrict listings. FSBO's seem to be okay to restrict as they are not REALTOR sponsored and broker carried. But we all know an agent who DOES take a FSBO under their wings and then posts it to Realtor.com. At Bohnen Realty -- we did a few. 

But it's NOT okay to restrict your listings just because you happen to own a discount brokerage like HelpUSell or Asssit2Sell.

It's criminal. 

We cannot discriminate on who buys a house thanks to the Fair Housing Act, right?

But it's perfectly okay to restrict your listings if you work for a discount broker? 

Sorry -- not in America. This cannot be allowed to happen. I applaud the FTC. I'm paying for MLS access. I've paid my NAR annual dues. Therefore I get to post my listings. The fact that they happen to belong to HelpUSell, or Assist2Sell is none of your damned business. You cannot penalize me because my business card doesn't read.; Sotheby's. 

And every year it seems, some other smart ass MLS system thinks it's perfectly okay to toss ethics and discrimination out the window. It's pathetic, it's appalling and in today's economy... it's certainly unnecessary. The last thing we need is an MLS dictating to us how we can list our listings or not. We need to see some real leadership from our local MLS to help many of us keep our doors open. The last thing we need is predatory behavior like this. 

Dozens of real estate brokerages are closing their doors every month. I've personally chronicled the death of 217 brokerages over the past 14 months. Six alone for Coldwell Banker, the most recent one being the Hunt Kennedy Group who died this past summer in Manhattan. The agents who still wanted to work went over to the Corcoran Group.

Okay, there's my rant. What's YOUR opinion?

Do you think it's okay to allow the local MLS to restrict their listings like that?

-- bart 

Google Wave. Google Search. Google Docs. Google Apps. Let's face it. Lots of us are Goo-goo over Google.

And for good reason. Simplicity is what we all crave.

Aren't you just a little tired of dealing with five, seven or even ten different companies out there who mange your website, Top Producer, Settlement Room, Point2Agent, Reply! for leads.... aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh it makes you want to scream.

There'a a lot to like about Google when it comes to anyone streamlining their real estate business. They innovate constantly, which is something a lot of us should be doing, too. And best of all, Google is a big enough company to pay lots of propeller head engineers to come up with some impressive business solutions at a price tag that we all like.

FREE.

So... if you haven't heard of Google Voice, here's the skinny from the Bartman. 

It's a single phone number that Google can set up for you, or in two weeks -- you can use your own phone number. But now on line, you can create any greeting you want. Forward calls to any phone number you want and it's pretty cool having ALL of your voice mail messages in one place.

My Google Gmail is about three years old, and I've got emails from now bankrupt and dead brokers like the Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy Group and All Pro Realty who closed their doors in October 2008.

So I guess it's time to go in and clean out some old Email "dust bunnies," here. 

One really nice advantage of Google voice is that is can translate your voice mails into text and send it to your cell phone or email. This way, if all you want to do is get the voicemail to hurry up and give you the phone number to call back... Google can now grant your wish. 

You can set up different outgoing voice mail greetings for your customers. Make another for your mom, one for your friends, etc. It's like a fancy Voice Mail PBX without the expensive price tag.

I've been using RingCentral.com and it's good. But I pay $49 a month. With Google, I can save that $49 and buy a tank of gas with my savings. I just need someone to invite me to Google voice so I can start using it. 

Click here and watch the Google Voice Video. 

While all of this sounds "too good to be true," it does come with a few "gotcha's."

1.) For now, Google is only available via invitation. 

2.) Not all of these cool features (above) are going to be available unless you HAVE a Google Voice phone number. 

Insiders for me at Google tell me that changes or STARTS to change in two more weeks. So stay tuned to my blog posts for more. 

-- bart

I've been micro-interrupted so many times with my iPhone with people Tweeting on Twitter I've just turned the damned service off so I can get some work done. 

I could care less that Arnold was pissed off that a photographer caught his wife red handed driving with a phone stuck to her ear. I'm thankful that the California fires were put out, but Arnold like to Tweet a lot. He Tweets seven... sometimes fifteen times a day.

He should change his name to the Tweet-a-nator instead of Gov-a-nator. 

President Obama only Tweets three or so times a day and it's usually to rally us or thank us for calling in for support of the helping to fix the Healthcare system. These are valuable Tweets, but when you add in Arnold and Tweets about the Balloon Boy from CNN I'm starting to lose my concentration. Nothing is getting done.

I turned all Tweet notifications OFF. I'm starting to hate the idiot who made the Tweet iPhone app even possible. How anybody gets any work done in this country and claims they can monitor 100 Tweets is a liar. You can tell them the Bartman said so.

It's impossible to focus and claiming you're a multi-tasking, Social Networking Twittering wizard and all your clients are happy and all your work is being done on time. I say it's pure BS.  Employers are now starting to march their employees off to the front door for screwing off too many hours at the company's payroll expense.

Now Google and Microsoft says they're adding these same TWEETS to their search results now.

Fine. There goes the neighborhood. More crap that you and I have to wade through when we start searching for stuff online tomorrow.  

The real estate market never sleeps and I guess it's fair to say that no matter how much we hate it... technology is going to be changing, too. So it's Bartman to the rescue to help all of us to make sense of this new fangled stuff. 

Today Google and Microsoft's Bing (you've got porn!) are going to include Tweets in their seach. Meaning the Bit.ly... short domains you see out there attached to a story are going to be part of organic and (my best guess) even Paid search results.

So for everyone out there who's been groaning and complaining about not having the time to learn to Chirp on Twitter... you have to do it now. Because relevant searches and Tweets about homes in your area are going to be a big part of how folks find you in a few more months.

The problem with this might mean we're all going to be stuck with wading through a bunch of stupid, meaningless tweets about what somebody had for lunch. It's bad enough we have too much information overload coming at us now. How can we possibly deal with Google and Microsoft now heaping more stuff on our plates to sort through? It just seems totally unfair. Nobody asked me if it was okay for Google or Microsoft to start adding TWEETS to the search results. I have to kick out an average of 15 jerks, bozos and leaches OUT of my Twitter account every week now.

Now I have to brace myself for having to sort through meaningless Tweets as part of a Google or Microsoft search engine results page? Please, somebody shoot me now. I just can't take anymore. 

The Bartman sees big problems with any real estate searches simply because there's the potential of having millions of "Tweets" which might be confusing if you search for Homes in your area. 

"Did you see that last episode of House?" (and I'm referring to Hugh Laurie's TV show: HOUSE) 

So how in God's good name are we going to find any relevance in that for a real estate search for homes in a certain area?

Hopefully smart people like Google's Matt Cutts can figure this one out.  

It's clear that Google's AdWords and those SEO Rock Stars has a place for helping their customers get ranked on Google naturally. But adding TWEETS to a Google search results can only be more of a headache as it gives us all MORE crap to wade through to find what we want. We need LESS information on line, not more of it. 

Asking Google and Microsoft Bing users to wade through a bunch of meaningless Tweets about what someone else had for lunch is only going to make me lose mine. 

-- bart

It's not really any sad news, here if you do not (right now) have a natural page one presence on Yahoo.com.

Prudential still has the leads on Yahoo for a while longer. So if you're not a Prudential REALTOR, there's really nothing you can or should be doing with Yahoo as 70% of the leads generated (or more) on Yahoo are still going to Prudential's call centers.

If they have a qualifying buyer for one of your listings, trust me. They'll call you and you'll be asked to cough up 25 or 30% of your commission for the qualified buyer.

Which is why I continue to tell all REALTORS there's just no reason to focus on any Yahoo natural search engine results for SEO purposes unless you're a Prudential broker or REALTOR. 

Steve Balmer might give Prudential the boot now that Microsoft owns Yahoo! so it's kinda hard to tell what's going to happen with the Yahoo-MSN Bing Menage-a-twa. time will tell. I do know that next week Windows 7 comes out and Apple is announcing a new line up of iMacs and I will be getting iMac #72. Brand new processors and a sportier new thinner chassis. I can't wait. 

Sorry for getting into weeds there for a minute -- back to SEO and Yahoo. 

In the off chance you are launching a brand new website anytime now and the end of the year, you might want to get $299 ready to shell out to Yahoo for PAID inclusion into the directory because as of 1 January 2010, it's gone. Or, hire your local SEO guru to get yourself listed into DMOZ as Yahoo still reads incoming from them. 

Yahoo removed (already) it's standard Web submit forms and the new one they are redirecting everyone to is here.

Suffice it to say, Search Submit is on life support and this program dies on 31 December 2009.

You heard it from the Bartman here first.  Goodbye Yahoo. Hello Google. 

-- bart

Did you hear the news? Adobe Systems -- makers of Adobe Photoshop, DreamWeaver, Illustrator and lots more software we all use made a bold statement. 

NO MORE PRODUCT LAUNCHES..... EVER.

It used to be that Adobe, Apple Computer, Dell, Compaq, you name it... would create a BUZZ for a new product launch by inviting a lot of people to New York City, San Francisco, Dallas, Miami (or others) and pack thousands of people into a convention center or hotel to roll out new product.

Flying bar charts, dancing computer generated graphics that would humble Terminator 2 would thunder across a Sony Jumbo-Tron or big screen. There's be a wet bar so you could cozy up with free drinks, get a little bit tipsy then write them a check or break out the plastic for buying (or even PRE-buying) the new products. 

But no more. The traditional product launch is dead. Rest In Peace. 

Now, Adobe is going to do VIRTUAL product launches and it claims it was already successful. Click here to see the Video.

Adobe shifted 75% of all of it's traditional product launches and advertising to online.

Adobe did a test with a new product roll out by advertising the event on their website. 200,000 people signed up and Adobe used Webcams and their own streaming software to stream a power point like presentation. For those who missed the live event, it was recorded so people could come back and watch in on demand later.

So here's an idea. What if we did away with traditional Open houses? How many people show up to your typical open house?

Just announce the LIVE Open House of 14 Elm Street on your brokerage website. Tweet the event to Twitter and send it out to all of the people who are on your monthly drip marketing newsletters. 

Some BENEFITS of the LIVE Open House

Instead of 7 couples and 4 individuals coming to the Open House, you now get 200 or more people watching it LIVE on your website.

You no longer have to kick the owners OUT of the house anymore.

You can do a LIVE open house one time, record it then stream the video from your website to anyone who missed it.

I would personally like to try this idea on for size. What do you think?

-- bart 

A week ago, the four A's (American Association of Advertising Agencies) created a bit of a big stink.

They suggested that smaller advertising agencies and marketing firms are a bargain -- claiming billing rates are half or one third of their larger colleagues.

Which means if your brokerage was using J Walter Thompson (a New York ad agency) as opposed to say a firm like ours, Voyager International.

Shopping for anything on price or FREE can be a big mistake. When you go out shopping for creative talent, you need to focus on finding a firm that's a good fit for your needs. 

1.) Are you a high maintenance client? 

Do you need to call your ad agency creative staff three or five times a day? Are you neurotic? Do you have the book "Computers for Idiots," next to your laptop? Then you probably need an in-house person. You'll drive any outside marketing agency nuts and you'll get fired inside of 90 days. 

2.) Do you know to use your computer? Does Internet Marketing frustrate you to no end?

Do you become annoyed even at simple explanations why your website isn't on Google two days after your website launches? These kind of clients are technology challenged and need an in-house person to constantly answer the same questions over and over again. Because asking your outside marketing or advertising agency these questions is a perfect recipe for you to get fired as a client. (It will be polite and apologetic. But nonetheless, you're simply being fired for being a high maintenance nag.)

3.) Can you afford $30,000 - $50,000 a year in outside marketing/advertising costs?

Small 10 agent shops typically fall under this umbrella. SEO and website services will run you $9,000 - $25,000 initially then another $900 - $2,000 a month in ongoing services. More SEO work (monthly) postcards, radio, and PRWeb.com Press Release ads, and lots of incoming links from the social media networks. 

4.) Do you need to spend $150,000 - $500,000 a year in outside marketing costs?

Typical ad spend on marketing and advertising if you have three or more offices, or your REALTOR work force is 300 agents or above.  SEO and website services will run you $20,000 - $40,000 initially then another $5,000 - $8,000 a month in ongoing services. Monthly sit down meetings are part of the service. Branding of your top selling agents with a semi-custom or custom website are often included with the larger agencies. More SEO work (monthly) postcards, radio, billboard and PRWeb.com Press Release ads, and lots of incoming links from the social media networks.

If you're a medium to large brokerage, it's certainly easy to see why using a large advertising agency can get pretty expensive. But there are good reasons for them to BE expensive.

1.) Top agencies have Top talent. If you need clip art and stock photos, you can go to iStockPhoto.com. But if you need to get your business name on the lips of everybody in town, nobody will out perform the creative and marketing talent you will get from a respected national advertising agency. Small agencies can do this too, it's just that with smaller teams, they can't turn on a dime quite as fast. 

2.) Resources, Resources, Resources. If you need a billboard done across town, if you need to run a :30 second radio commercial, if you need to brainstorm on a 2nd website strategy... it's not a problem if you needed it done yesterday. 

All of these things cost money. 

Smaller creative and marketing shops like Voyager and many others are a different breed of ad agency.

Instead of big teams and big systems, you invest into the creative talent of a small group of multi-talented people. A day in the life doing my job, for example is spent often working 6 days a week, and working around the hours of some of my clients who can only brain storm with me at 7:45 pm my time... 10:45 pm east coast time. Being a small shop, we often have a creative hit list of outside freelance copywriters and Flash design gurus who love nothing more than to work the midnight oil on creative, crash and burn projects.

Small shops are tenacious and we have the tendency sometimes to be slow on completing things. All too often, clients like to micro-manage and add lots of feature creep requests which create their own slow downs.  Smaller shops are also more technology and marketing savvy than their larger colleagues. This means a nice departure from the business as usual, "one-size-fits-all" marketing mix.

Down markets often result in the big players in your market pulling back on advertising. This is a tragic mistake that you can take advantage of. For example, the newspaper used to carry a full page ad of Amazing Realty. But for weeks, they've not advertised there anymore. Customers reading the newspaper get used to reading the ads from Amazing Realty. But now... they're not there anymore. 

Next time home buyer are no different than next time car buyers. Or next time appliance or sofa buyers. They all read the newspaper. They all spend time on line surfing Google. They all drive around town and they listen to the radio. 

If Broker Bob from Amazing Realty used to advertise in these places, and now they're not... there's a hole here that needs to be filled with another marketing message and it can be yours. 

People need to be told that you're good at what you do. Impress them with a catchy tagline. Wow them with your new and improved website.

The two rules of getting more customers are the same today despite the fact we have Facebook, Twitter, and Google to get folks to come to your website.

1.) Frequency

2.) Reach

These two rules is why advertising agencies work. They know the two things that help people remember your name and your brand.

In today's marketing, everything you do to market to next time home buyers and sellers should drive people to your website. But getting people to get to your website has to be done with a traditional mix and the new media. Radio, newspaper (including CraigsList) and direct mail postcards work great. 

But if you're not good at creating a consistent message that you can use on Facebook, newspaper, radio or postcards... then it's time for you to get some help from advertising agency. Saving money is the worst reason to do your own creative work. 90% of those who have tried will often fail. Sure, you know how to market and sell homes, but it doesn't mean you can call yourself an ad agency of one.

You might be good with a scalpel. You need sharp medical instruments so you can make a fabulous living carving animals out of a single block of wood. But you wouldn't operate on yourself if you needed your appendix taken out with that same scalpel.  

A closing note about creative people and advertising agencies...

It doesn't matter if you choose a large or small agency to help you rebrand yourself and make more money in 2010. You'll find that any ad agency big or small is filled with creative people, passionate about helping you achieve your dreams of getting bigger, becoming more visible on Google and they will enjoy hearing that you are now pocketing more commissions. 

90% of brokers and REALTORS will need some outside marketing help in 2010. My suggestion if you are in that group... Please spend lots of time researching firms big and small and find yourself a real marketing "partner." Someone who cares about making you a Real Estate Rock Star in your market.  Once you find the right firm, be prepared to spend some money as you are only investing in yourself. Because no matter what the costs are, price becomes just another detail when you find yourself one day sitting page one on Google and enjoying a never ending stream of next time homebuyers coming to your website.

-- bart

I like to read the other posts on Active Rain sometimes. One caught my eye earlier today. It was a post by ActiveRainer Caroline Pigott. Her short article on Authenticity and Trust are hot topics of discussion right now. Caroline just didn't include enough information on her post to shed a lot more light on a disturbing trend we are now seeing in the fight for landing new customers.  The lack of Trust. 

Lots of websites make lots of claims. Many of them are misleading. Many say the same thing.

People are getting so much information from too many websites that all make the same claims. When this turns to excess information overload, how are next time homebuyers going to understand what you have to offer and how can you improve the chances of you getting a lead when your website looks exactly the same as 15,000 other websites?

Case in Point

It used to be that you could get a lot of clicks to your website simply because you're page one #1. We used to believe in that for a while. Our site, Voyager360.com has been page one #1 on Google now for seven years in a row. And for that matter, we're also page one #2.

If we're #1 on Google for selling virtual tour cameras, why is it that some of you here on ActiveRain never heard of us? 

The same question can be said if you are a seasoned real estate agent Rockstar. Let's assume you're one of the top dogs in Minneapolis Minnesota.

But on-line, nobody ever heard of you. You're a real nobody.

In Minneapolis, you have radio and TV and billboard advertising. But if I'm moving from Santa Fe, NM to Minneapolis, Minnesota in 3 months, and I find you on Google and I click on the link and come to your website... what is it going to take for you to get me to register on your website so I can get homes from your local MLS automatically sent to my mailbox?

TRUST. 

I have to trust you know what the hell you're talking about. I have to believe that you have a real handle on making my move to Minneapolis a smooth and bump free ride. And the problem is, you have to do this without talking to me and I have to GET that message inside of 7 to 10 seconds. 

But how can you show that you're trust worthy?  Ever agent says the same thing online. "Buy from me because I'm a lifetime resident and I know the area." You can drop in all the cryptic acronyms next to your name. ePro. ABR. CRS. GRI. Studies have shown these are not factors in choosing you over another agent in your area.

When customers go looking for homes and they find your website with the same, me-too template website that 15,000 other agents have right now... Does this help build trust? I have found out that many of the me-too real estate agent websites are not landing the customers they once did anymore. 

One of my customers just today told me their $9,000 website they paid for at Real Estate Webmasters is not what they want and they told me to bull doze it. Quite ironically, this $9,000 website doesn't look much different than a $249 template you'd buy from AgentImage.com.

Does it have to cost $9,000 to build trust? No, it actually costs about $400 a year to build trust.

In addition to coaching lots of brokers who really need our help in retooling their business for Facebook, Linkedin.com and Twitter customers... we had to first eat our own dog food and then teach agents and brokers how to do what we did to keep our cash registering going Ka-ching every day.

Below are the 3 steps you can take right now to dramatically improve the quantity and quality of leads coming to your website.

Step One: Get rid of the me-too looking website. Show the world that you can spend a few marketing dollars and build a website that looks a bit more original. 

Step Two: Register with the local BBB and get yourself online and get the TrustLink attached to your site.

Step Three: Privacy Policy. So many people are getting their Identity stolen and they do not want to get bombarded with email from banks, moving companies, mortgage outfits, or the local landscapers. Customers WANT to know BEFORE they sign up with your site WHAT and WHERE their personal information goes. Sign up with TrustE.com. When you create a good privacy policy, you get to sport that cool looking TrustE link on the bottom of your website like we have it on the bottom of ours.   Click here and scroll down to the bottom of our webpage and SEE the BBB link and click on that. See the nice testimonials we have there?

Now click on the TrustE link and see our Privacy policy.

Since we have added these links to our website 90 days ago, we have been consistently closing on $15,000 sales or more every week.  We're so booked up with client work now, that we cannot take on any new clients until mid December.

It's a nice problem to have. 

For several of our customers, we are doing the same thing for agents and broker websites by building Trust into their websites and showing visitors this. So far, it's working out pretty darn good. In 90 days I will let you all see an official "ka-ching report," and how it helped grow new revenues for a handful of brokers and agents on these new ideas. 

Please email me if you want a copy of this research. 

-- Bart 

Competition for Amazon Bookstore? Maybe. It depends on how you look at it.

Amazon has gone Star Trek. Sort of.

Did you ever watch the TV show or any of the movies? All of them have these five inch by seven inch pads or electronic PADS. They seem to download stuff to, read them. Stacks of them in different colors were on Captain Picard's desk sometimes. 

Google's plans for many books in fact will be complimentary or if you look at it this way -- ALTERNATIVES. Amazon offers the Kibble.

It's a box that sort of looks like your kids' "Etch a Sketch," pad but it loads up your favorite eBook in the "kibble" format.

Google will be letting you read the books either as a PDF download or on line as a Web version. 

Considering the book publishing, and REALTORS destroy a lot of trees with millions of paper contracts, this is Google's way of going green as you won't have to buy the book anymore at your local book store or news stand. 

Good for SEO

There more than a few smart REALTORs out there. Some of them are my friends and clients. Colleagues like Bernice Ross who is a syndicated columnist at Inman News is sure to like this news as she can no doubt get her books out to more REALTORS who need them. 

-- bart 

Could there actually be an AGENT or BROKER without a Website somewhere in San Francisco or San Diego...?  

According to Google, there has to be more than a few businesses out there without a website presumed hiding in San Diego or San Francisco.

Google is testing a new advertising program with a FLAT fee per lead. They are letting businesses in San Diego and San Francisco test drive a new Google Pay Per Lead advertising model that connects you to a potential customer right over the phone. Way cool. Of course, the program will work if you have a website or not. But Google's primary push is for the businesses in California that don't seem to have a website.

These businesses just want to put a dollar into a box, and they get a phone call from a potential customer. Nice idea. Now let's spin this to a GENUINE NEED for us REALTORS. 

Google is innovating or reinventing themselves every few months it seems and now they're expanding on their highly profitable AdWords program. 

For many of you that don't know a lot about Google AdWords; it's Google's Pay Per Click program and it's just now turned (version) 3. It's the third major upgrade since their Pay Per Click AdWords program started way back in 1999. 

If you're a REALTOR or broker in the SFO bay area or in San Diego, here is how can get into this cool new program to help you land a lot more leads providing that you don't care about reading online reports about clicks or conversions.  You just need leads. Fine. Put a few dollars into the box and you get phone calls. It's that simple. 

It has been often said by many a seasoned REALTOR... GET me a customer on the phone. And I can sell them a house.

Well Google has heard you and they're delivering on this idea now. At least for two California markets, anyway to test it. 

Here is how it works: You set up your AdWords account just as you would for any real estate centric term to the bay area, for example;

san francisco homes for sale  or   san francisco real estate  or  san francisco foreclosures

After you CREATED your AdWords ads or your banner ads, you get to make one more choice. You LINK your Pay Per Click AD to a voice phone number. (Google Voice). So people who click on your ads, will be connected to your phone. You get the Google whisper voice letting you know that your LEAD has come from your Google ad to your Google Voice number. 

So what's a LEAD worth right now if Homegain calls you? 25% of your commission. Ouch. And you thought taking the Broker exam was painful.

You pay $3 for the same lead and you get connected to a buyer thanks to Google. 

The DEATH of the Yellow Pages

Does anybody even use the Yellow Pages anymore? I don't. I was upset to see the yellow book tossed in my driveway packaged in a plastic wrapper a few months ago. So I called the Yellow Book people and the Other Book people and asked them to REMOVE me from all distribution.

The woman on the other end of the phone at the Yellow Pages was getting her feathers ruffled, "How are you going to find a local plumber," she scoffed.  

"Google," I replied. We need stuff, we Google everything. I'm sorry lady, but your Yellow Pages are obsolete. Trust me, when people in their seventies and eighties die, you're really out of a job.  People in this age group are the only ones keeping the Yellow Pages on life support." 

She started to get pretty miffed at this point.

I asked her, "Do you have an 8-Track player in your car?"  She immediately replied, "Of course not." 

I said, "Well, you're the 8-track player for business listings, Google is the MP3 player and everybody wants the MP3 player."

She hung up on me.  Well, that was no surprise. 

Goodbye HomeGain, Farwell Reply!, So Long HouseValues.  Hello Google

I used to work for a luxury broker here in Santa Fe. Every once in a while, one of the Lead Sharks would call us with a qualified buyer with fabulous FICO scores. I know that HomeGain and others still call agents today and try to get them to AGREE to the lead for 25% - 30% of your hard earned commissions.

If Google's new AdWords and Google Voice program is successful in the two test markets, I can see the death of HomeGain, Reply!, LendingTree and even HouseValues in 2010. 

What REALTOR in their right mind will want to pay 25% of your hard earned commissions when you can get the same lead for $3 bucks?

Trust me. That day is coming. 

-- bart