Listings are the life blood of real estate.
The saying is “who lists, lasts.” Helping buyers find a home is good. Listing a home for sale is better. As a listing agent my name is out there on the sign in the neighborhood and on the flyer right at street level. My broker advertises my listing in Homes & Land magazine together with other Brio Realty listings.
Real estate agents ask me if they could advertise my listing in print or on the web. I say YES, BUT: limited to the particular publication and, on the Web, limited to the agent’s personal website.
As a listing agent I owe it to my clients to sell their home by promoting the home’s FOR SALE status to the best of my ability. This can include the promotion of my listing by other agents. After all, these agents are looking to find buyers for my client’s home.
I promote my client’s home widely on the web: on my own websites and elsewhere on the web: ad on craigslist.com and placement on Zillow.com and Windows Live Expo (MSN), to name a few.
I also create and post a Visual Tour at visualtour.com where I elect to have the Visual Tour automatically sent to Google Base, HomePages.com, HomeSeekers, PrudentialPropertiesVOW, Trulia, and Yahoo’s classified ads.
Today, I checked these sites to make certain my clients get my/their money’s worth. I checked Trulia. I can’t find the Visual Tour of my listing. But what I DO FIND instead is MY LISTING that has been put there by livingchoices.com.
Who is livingchoices.com?
They did not ask me whether they could advertise my listing! The link from Trulia to livingchoices.com shows that the home “IS OFFERED” by Picket Street which is part of RE/MAX Northwest Realtors. What does OFFERED mean? To the average person this implies that Jesse Moore & Dennis Pearce of RE/MAX Northwest Realtors are the listing agents. It says right above their names: “Contact Agents, ” which at least implies “Listing Agents.”
So let’s move on to the details that livingchoices.com provides on Picket Street and Jesse and Dennis. Voila! The first thing we learn about Jesse and Dennis is that: “Of all of our listings for 2006, 100% of them sold (none of them expired, and none of them were cancelled). Homes listed with us averaged 30 days on market, with a selling price of 102.2% of the ...” This all but confirms that they ARE the listing agents of the Woodinville home on 185th Ave NE. In fact, right below is says “54 Properties offered by Jesse Moore & Dennis Pearce” Are these all their listings? I checked on the Northwest Multiple Listing members-only site: As of 08.28.05 at 11 am Jesse has 2 active listings, one with a contingent offer; Dennis has no listings.
So what’s going on here?
All members of the local Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS) are required to get written approval to advertise another member’s listing. I was asked via email by Dennis and Jesse for permission to advertise my listing in the Real Estate Book of North King/ Snohomish County. My answer was specific: You have my permission for the publication you mentioned in your email below. I’ve never gave approval for my listing to be advertised on the Internet, because I was doing that myself.
Problem is that the Real Estate Book of North King/Snohomish County is published by NCI, Network Communications, Inc. of Lawrenceville, GA, “the largest national publisher of local printed and online magazines for the real estate market.”
NCI also states: “Our websites and online proprietary real estate portal, LivingChoices.com, complement the strength of our print publications. With over 10 million unique visitors viewing 500 million listings annually, LivingChoices.com is a top destination for consumers actively seeking their next apartment or home.” Because LivingChoices.com broadcasts their information to other sites my listing appeared there but in association with another brokerage and agents.
I’m not blaming Jesse and Dennis for giving the consumer the impression that they are listing MY listing and that they have together 54 listings when they have just two. They are the "beneficiaries" (and "victims"?) of livingchoices.com scouring and scraping the web for listings in the area in which the two of them do business in the hope to find potential buyers. Neither Dennis nor Jesse have written the potentially misleading language on livingchoices.com nor are they responsible for broadcasting my listing to Trulia.com and making it look like my listing was their listing.
Jesse and Dennis are probably honest, hard working real estate agents. I say this with confidence without ever having met them. Proof: when it comes to Picket Street Properties and pickettstreet.com, their own website, Dennis and Jesse do not pretend to be listing MY listing nor any of the other 54 listings that appeared to be their listings on livingchoices.com.
Why do I care about all of this?
Because I work very hard to educate my clients and potential customers about this business of real estate. The consumer has a hard time understanding the difference between a listing agent and a selling agent. Can you explain to me why the SELLING Agent is so named when he/she is representing the BUYER? Many consumers don’t even know that they can be represented as a buyer by an agent. And many of those that do, don't really understand the benefit. The listing agent is the one that is publicly visible and thus, “gets the respect” of the consumer. That’s why giving the false impression that an agent is the listing agent is so prevalent in this business.
Real Estate Portals without Rules
Websites like livingchoices.com may serve a purpose but consumers should not look to them as an authoritative source about Real Estate practices. These “intermediary real estate portals” and hundreds like it do not have to follow the member guidelines of a Multiple Listing Service and adhere to the Code of Ethics of the National Association of Realtors. The way they present information does not break any laws as far as I know. But the ways they present information often misinforms and misleads the consumer.
P.S.
I called Jesse and pointed out that my permission to advertise my listing was limited to the local publication and did not extend to the Internet. He and Dennis agreed and they will try to remove the unauthorized postings on the Web. This is the second time I've covered this subject - the first one is called: The Wild World Web.
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