Would You Like Some Boots With That House?
Leslie Ebersole has written a brilliant and absorbing post on the new business model being adopted by real estate listing aggregator websites, the questionable practice of selling territories and the equally dreary practice of stuffing real estate websites with tacky retail marketing.
Read this post a couple times. Better yet, read it over and over until you get the clear and unmistakable message behind where our industry is headed for the sake of a buck. Ask yourself how the consumer is served by this "one agent per page" and "we want only one agent to represent each city" business model. After reading Leslie's post, you may decide you don't like the way the future looks, but you'll at least be able to see it coming.
It's not hard to get me to spend money to promote my listings or myself. Every month I send money to my MLS, my broker Baird&Warner, Realtor.com, Zillow.com, Trulia.com, Yahoo.com, Diverse Solutions, ActiveRain, and all the software for my wp site. So this morning when I saw the post from ActiveRain CEO Nikesh Parekh about RealEstate.com, I quickly raced over to see what I could buy next. Surprisingly, I found boots, handbags and electronics.
It's another real estate search site....yawn...not terribly attractive compared to the leaders like Zillow.com or many broker sites. In my area, RealEstate.com presents listings under broker reciprocity in what apears to be a direct feed off MRED, the MLS for northern Illinois.
What is unusual compared to other real estate sites is the advertising that popped up with a search for my listing at 1010 S Batavia Ave, Geneva IL.
Priced at $1,100,000 this home is at the high end for our area.
Look at the ad to the right. It is showing a darling Kate Spade bag....also a pricey choice.
I clicked away and was distracted by $500 handbags for a few minutes, but I managed to find my way back to RealEstate.com. No new handbags for me this year!
When I searched for a lower priced home in Geneva, RealEstate.com suggested that I might want to score on some discount electronics.
This isn't good for sellers....this draws traffic from the site.
But do you think that I really can get a Nintendo Wii for $26.76?
If you click on Want More Information you can register and then can "choose from several local REALTORs® in your area and receive a gift card upon closing".
I was presented, however, with something called Atlantic and Pacific Real Estate, which is not a member of our mls so I have no idea who the lead is going to. I wonder who will respond to my inquiry?
And what is really interesting to me is this ad from Zappos that popped up. The ad is displaying the exact boots that I'd just been looking at on Zappos. Creepy.
When I tried to search for homes in my town of St. Charles, IL, I was told that no homes were found in that area, so it was redirecting me to a partner site, HomeGain.com.
Awful! Off to the right was a flashing box that said "CONGRATULATIONS! YOU ARE THE ILLINOIS WINNER OF AN APPLE IPAD".
(PS: there are 833 Active Listings in St. Charles)
So what is happening at ActiveRain?
Some interesting lines from Nikesh's post that I am pondering (my thought or question is italicized).
- "Have you noticed the number of ads on real estate web sites like Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com? Real estate web sites have become overly cluttered with ads, "featured agents" and featured homes" (handbags, boots and electronics aren't clutter?)
- "RealEstate.com is re-launching in February 2011.... " (I assume he means 2012, but they are selling this now. I want to know exactly what advertising will be in those sidebars before I sign on with a new site.)
- "Given ActiveRain's expertise in hyperlocal blogging and social media, ActiveRain has a great opportunity to build a great service from RealEstate.com's local content. (Can't quite parse this..does local content = listings?)
- "One Agent Per Page" (Ken Tracy was quoted $249 for Naperville, not too bad but not cheap either. And is there a guarantee that there will only ever be one agent per page?).
- "Social Media: We are building out a social media area where the Local Expert real estatet agent will be able to post information on local events or other local features....." (is AR is building a blog spot for the RealEstate.com City sponsor?).
- "Unlike other sites, we will allow real estate agents and brokers to backlink to their personal web site or IDX web site from RealEstate.com." (I backlink to my site from all the major aggregator sites like Realtor.com, Zillow.com, Yahoo.com, Trulia.com, the Tribune sites, the WSJ and many others.)
- "We want ONLY one agent to represent each city (not neighborhood)" (IMO "we" means that AR is right in the thick of it. And why would Market Leader restrict blog content to just one paying client? Doesn't make sense to me at all.).
What does this mean? A number of AR members have received calls from sales people who say they are with AR while others have received calls from sales reps with Market Leader. People are posting bits and pieces of the calls. We are definitely a chatty bunch.
Nikesh commented in his thread that AR members' content would not appear on RealEstate.com. I guess I don't understand why AR is so involved in the new ML programs if they don't expect tighter integration between all of the ML sites. There is also the AR Terms of Service (read starting at "Although you retain...")
I wonder if there's a future for the defunct Tree.com. Along with some heavy hitters (which I'm not) I wrote for them for about three months this year and saw a lot of potential.
I'd like to know the future plans for AR Community Pages and Localism (they seem to come and go).
As I write my business plan for 2012, including my marketing budget, I would like to know more. So would my chatty friends and colleagues here on AR.
I've written before about consolidation of real estate technology sites, starting with 800 Lb Gorilla last year. Then there was the time (now not particularly proud of it) of when I accused Jon Washburn of making AR into a Craiglist. (I'd just had a listing scraped from Craigslist that ended up with terrible consequences for a seller, I was sensitive.)
I still think that Content + Listings is the Holy Grail, and have been vigorously pursuing this strategy on my own site. So is my brokerage, and of course Zillow and Trulia have been working on this for quite a while by allowing all of us to post blog content.
I hope that AR finds a sustainable financial footing, and I really hope that what makes AR special isn't lost while the management is looking around for new boots.
This post was written by Leslie Ebersole of Baird & Warner Real Estate.
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My Email leslie.ebersole@bairdwarner.com
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