Questioning the House Values Purchase of AR

Just when I was starting to get back to blogging here I find out that House Values has made a "minority purchase" of AR which has sparked some interesting posts making suggestions to HV such as the  Open Letter To HouseValues (CC. Active Rain) post and two others you can read  here and  here.

Many years ago I was contacted over the phone by HomeGain.  This was the first time a lead generating company contacted me and they sure made things sound good.  Over $1,000 later and not one decent lead, I learned to hate lead generating companies that charge money up front. 

In fact, I am checking out a service mentioned on Katie Evan's post House Values-Praise God for competition!.  I'll pay a referral fee at closing and that's how it should be with any kind of lead or referral generating company.  I've had some success with HungryAgents and have sold and closed one listing with them.  I believe there was a fee plus a referral percentage but it was due at closing.  Many of their leads are out of my area or never respond back but I'm not paying for these unless we close.  So that was a closing I wouldn't have had otherwise.

I've read many stories about HV, most of them very negative.  Sure, just like with HomeGain and others, some agents have success.  But from what I've read, the successful agents are in the minority with lead generation companies.

When I first heard of the HV/AR "merger," it didn't really bother me.  So maybe they now have a great database of agents to contact & try to sell their services to.  If someone wants to give them a try that's their business.  I won't be one of them.  For new agents that don't do their homework, the fact that HV can now say they are part of AR might make unknowing agents feel confident in the program because of their AR association.  Oh well, all they have to do is an Internet search or a search on AR & they'll read more negatives than positives.  If they don't take the time to do that then it will most likely be an expensive lesson. 

But some others have given me another thing to think about regarding this new partnership.  Like many agents, most lead generating portals are the bane of those of us that put time and money getting our websites in top positions on the most popular search engines.  If we continue adding content to AR we are making the entire site stronger & stronger.  If HV can garner this strength in some way to help their portal and we contributed to it, we can only blame ourselves when we start losing serps to them.  So far I don't feel them breathing down my back on the se's.  But could this AR partnership change that?

I'm all for AR getting some cash for operating this site.  But if this partnership can potentially hurt the members, and maybe we won't see this until it's too late, then I can't give my approval and will have to rethink my membership here.  There are many social networking sites, even others specifically for real estate, that are also free to join.  I'm very confused right now and have read warnings from those that I consider to be more in the know about these things than I am.