On Saturday, NAR made a new policy that lets the local MLS set policies on how agents can (legally) post listings into a social media platform.
NAR just gave one more weapon to the local MLS's and a reason to "restrict listing data," from being shown on anyone's Facebook posts or, change the way and manner in which we can (legally) do it now.
Think about this for a minute.
Right now, thousands of agents post their listings on their Facebook pages every single day. My lake house in Monument is for sale and I posted it on this new platform called AdWerx. If you never heard of AdWerx, I'll cover more on them in a minute below.
Promoting a listing Weblink or URL is pretty darn easy today, thanks to social media.
We'll simply copy and paste the link into Facebook. It traces the link and pops up a few photos for us to pick from, too. Wow! What could be easier? I can copy and paste dozens of listings into my Facebook wall and on the walls of all my friended subscribers.
It's a fast, fun and easy way to post dozens of listings into hundreds of thousands of people that are following you with just a couple of mouse clicks.
But "technically speaking," that listing data link or URL belongs to the local MLS. Almost everyone tends to take that for granted.
It goes without saying that Facebook and other forms of socila media has spoiled a lot of us. Once we learn to copy and paste listing URL's and once you learn how easy it is to Tweet your listings and post your listings on Facebook -- now it looks like that practice is going to be policed, taxed or changed.
With so many MLS organizations being threatened by technology, it's not a stretch of the imagination to see what's coming down the road now that NAR is going to let the local MLS create new rules, new regulations and (here it comes) more $$$ penalties for not following the new rules.
Millions of posts on Facebook never get deleted. And that can be a problem. No homeowner wants to see their listing still for sale months after they bought it. But a lot of socila media platforms don't give us the ability to delete them once you press the "post" button.
Granted, if a link to said property came from the local MLS, then the link will be dead and when you click on it, you might get a redirect to a home page or an error message might say, "Sorry, this home is no longer offered for sale."
But if you manually post a photo and manually type in the home's listing details... then when the home does sell... you can understand why "...Houston, we have a problem."
NAR's decision could create some interesting problems for a darling new startup company called AdWerx.
AdWerx has poured millions of dollars advertising to agents they can list a property and have your face and your listing shown on the sidebar ads of websites like the Wall Street Journal, CNN and other websites where you won't see Trulia or Zillow ads for agents and homes.
What happens to AdWerx? Well for starters, this decision could mean they go out of business. Or, the local MLS can force data licensing fees to them to pay.
Either way, the cause for some alarm is here. Posting your listings on AdWerx as of last Saturday's decision, is going to be a "risky at best," situation until we know exactly what each MLS is going to do with this new NAR rule to make policy on how, when, where, why and how much brokers or agents are going to have to pay to continue the practice of posting listings on any social portal or platform.
Hang on people. It's going to be a bumpy ride from here.
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