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News Flash: The NAR did not invent the Internet

By
Real Estate Agent with Mezzina Real Estate & Insurance

News Flash: The NAR did not invent the Internet. And the local board of REALTORS did not write a computer program that provides you with the search capabilities you have come to take for granted. No, those wonderful tools are the product of government involvement and funding along with some very smart private sector entrepreneurs.

I don't remember, or, care to look up the dates, but, I remember having a web site up and running before there ever was a REALTOR dot com. It was with a company in California that I found on the Grand Daddy of Search Engines "Yahoo!". If I remember it right AOL was in a heated battle with another on-line provider called Prodigy. And, I do remember those big MLS books with the black and white photo and brief description and how the good ones always seemed to be under contract by the time the book was published. Back then the "listing" agent was charged to place the property in the book and the "buyer" and "seller" side paid for the book.

Some think the "top producer" back then would pay for their own copy of the book. Not the way I remember it. The top producer got the company copy first and all the other agents waited their turn to look at it. Those were the ones that ended up buying their own copy because they got tired of waiting to see the BROKERS office copy. They were wonderful days when you could spend all day at a desk using the reverse look-up directory and call home owners. Many could get a listing appointment with the telephone call to the "non-working" spouse and get the job to sell the home without showing one graph or comparable sale and listing.

But, no thanks to the National Association of REALTORS need be given. They really had nothing to do with the computerization of our data. They were late from the start getting all the local boards and state associations to come to an agreement. Who among us has not said, "a committee is a group of men that individual could not get the job done and as a group decided nothing could be done"? Well, I'm not a good joke teller, but I'm sure you get the jest of the comment.

What the NAR did do was open the barn door. They took our listings and promoted them on "our" own web site for a one stop shopping experience for the consumer. If you had a web site back then you worked your tail off at night uploading pictures and descriptions that were not available to the consumer on REALTOR dot com. You either learned SEO or you paid someone to push the key words into your meta tags so it was your site that popped up first when someone wanted to buy a house in your market area. Later, we paid outside companies to sell us our leads back from REALTOR dot com that were stale from the get go. 

And, today we are here on Active Rain trying once more to get an edge as the art of selling real estate becomes more complex than folding a map back to its original configuration. Remember maps? They were great tools in their day and you had better know how to read them if you were going to find that "best buy" of a house for your customer (their were no clients except the home owner back then). Today - we just type in the address to the GPS and go knowing ahead of time how long it will take us to arrive.

Now if you think your dues to the NAR made all of that happen then you are most likely still waiting to hear that we found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. All I can say is, "Good Luck and pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff!"

Comments (5)

Cari Anderson
Danville, CA

What a great post. I loved the reminiscing. I've heard tales of those big books before but that was well before my time and of course, I've always been on the loan too. I will say though that my very first email account was cari@prodigy.net. I've always wondered what happened to Prodigy. LOL. And I still own maps! Technology is not 100% foolproof!

Jul 01, 2010 07:13 AM
Ellen Crawford
Maximum One Executive REALTORS® - Alpharetta, GA
Alpharetta Real Estate Agents & Alpharetta REALTOR

Great post and so true!  Isn't it amazing how they want to include all those companies that tried to do away with our services like FSBOS's steep discounters and FEE only...etc?

Jul 01, 2010 07:13 AM
Leslie Prest
Leslie Prest, Prest Realty, Sales and Rentals in Payson, AZ - Payson, AZ
Owner, Assoc. Broker, Prest Realty, Payson,

Does anybody really think they did? I started RE before the fancy MLS software we use now, The old stuff gave very basic info, and we had books with the info also.

Jul 01, 2010 07:32 AM
Maureen McCabe
HER Realtors - Columbus, OH
Columbus Ohio Real Estate

I believe I read the post the other day that sounded like NAR was being given credit for inventing the Internet. 

 

Jul 01, 2010 08:24 AM
Gregory Bain
Mezzina Real Estate & Insurance - Little Egg Harbor, NJ
For Homes on the Jersey Shore

Thanks for stoppiing by everyone. I'll try to return the favor.

I guess I am just not a fan of the NAR.

Jul 02, 2010 04:45 AM