As we all know, Market Leader shelled $8.25 Mil to buy this domain: RealEstate.com. I wrote about RealEstate.com in RealEstate.com Gold Rush
I am curious, and it means I have questions… quite a few of them. I ran into several posts about RealEstates.com after those written by Niki and Bob Stewart.
Comments on Niki’s and Bob’s posts are different from comments on other posts (including mine). They are less confrontational. Other blogs pretty much are all negative, and plain angry.
Does this mean that “buying” a city is a bad idea? Maybe. At the same time there are several members who “bought” their city, and they are not clueless newbies. For example, Katerina Gasset bought Wellington, FL. Nobody can call her clueless. So, she (and some other people) see value in it?
Can there be value in “buying” a city? Maybe…
I understand one thing for sure. If we do not buy, it will be open to anyone out there. What would we feel (and say) when we suddenly see that “our” city has been bought by someone smart like Ben Kinney, and who then will be giving you referrals, that he would be getting from being a featured expert?
Or there will be a company, which would pay $79 or $149, or $249, or $449 a month, and then would do referrals for 25% of the listing side? Or even 30% or more, as in our business we do not want to pay $50 for a lead, but would not have a problem to pay 30% for a referral for as long as we do not pay until we close.
At least for me there would be no problem saying “yes” to a telephone offer of a referral for 30% of one side. Yes, I would not have a problem paying $1,500 or $2000 on a $200K transaction, and I would say no to a $50 per lead offer…
So, if these guys would be able to get 2 referrals out of this, they will be way ahead of the game.
What would we say if this happens?
And the last. I can understand that we can say “yes” and buy, or “no” and move on, but I am not sure I understand the angriness with the whole reaction to RealEstate.com. What are we so angry about? The guys bought a domain, paid cool $8.25 Mil, now they want to sell something (cities) and make money.
What is wrong with this formula?
It seems that AR community for some reason thinks that we were supposed to get a sweeter deal, or something for free, and it is not happening.
We still can vote with out wallet.
So, vote, but no reason to get angry. They did not pay that much money to entertain us.
Photo via Flickr.com by ivanpw
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