One of the immutable truths about real estate is there are no immutable truths about real estate. There are many people who will spend great amounts of time and money telling you how marketing ought be done, but at the end of the day, few methods of marketing are any better than any other. And sometimes the more expensive methods are some of the least effective (read: lead generation companies.)

Yesterday I received my first lead through Zillow. Not through the E-Z Ad for which I spent a whopping $100 for a zip code I won't mention lest the undesirables start wasting all of my impressions, but through Posting a Home for Sale. This home was not one of my listings. It was a home in my neighborhood which I posted, complying with the local rules for advertising by prominently displaying the name of the listing brokerage.

But in the right-hand corner of the screen was the picture you see to the right here, and it was here that this buyer clicked. Two minutes later I received the phone call and this morning I was showing properties.

Posting a home in my neighborhood for sale isn't much different than the monthly postcards I used to send to all of my neighbors listing homes that had sold. Included on the postcard was the disclaimer "data provided by ARMLS" because not all the sales were mine. But the impression given, within the rules as written, was that I had.

The primary difference between those monthly postcards and the Zillow posting was the cost - several hundred dollars in postage alone versus a few minutes to verify the information and enter the home for sale.

Some local MLS boards are warning their agents that they cannot post homes for sale in Zillow, even using seemingly threatening language such as "better safe than sorry." Are they kidding me? Of all of the blatant violations of local advertising rules currently being used (including at least two Arizona agents advertising on Zillow through an EZ-Ad without mentioning their broker's name - a definite no-no), this is what gets the local MLS fired up?

Jonathan Washburn recently speculated that Zillow is trying to eliminate the agent-entered MLS by allowing data entry direct to Zillow. Given the data standards required for MLS entry, and considering most agents only find out about a home's availability through the MLS, I don't see this is likely.

Of course, it's not all that hard to determine the reason. There's still a school of thought that listings are the lifeblood of any real estate company (probably true) and that this vital information needs to be held as close to the vest as can be (blatantly false.) The question should deal with how many places a home can be advertised, not how few - how to best attract a buyers' agent to a property, not how best to protect a double-dip commission.

Hell, if someone would like to advertise a listing of mine and it means I may get it sold faster, by all means go right ahead. I'm all in favor of seeing my homes sell for my clients. 

But that's another rant for another time.

Not that I should rant. Ranting breaks one of the immutable truths of real estate blogging. And I'd hate to do that after over a year of doing this.