RealTown's RealTalk

While at the Florida Association of REALTORS(r) Convention in Orlando this past week we signed the final approved contract with LISTING BOOK. Our Association should be up and running in less than 30 days. Our membership will be delighted with this marketing platform and we will start training on it very soon.

Tom Scaglione, e-PRO, REALTOR(r)
Future Home Realty, Inc.
Direct: 813-310-8200
Tom@MarketingTampaBay.com
http://www.TampaBankOwnedTeam.com

When this became available in my area I signed myself up with a fictitious name so I could monitor what would be sent to my customers. I found lots of spam coming in to my made up name. I don't know if it was a fluke or if they have changed their tactics. Give it a test drive.

Nadine

Listing Book has some issues that they have refused to address:

1. Each email sent to a contact has a "weather report" at the bottom. For our association, the weather report is for a town an hour + away from my market area. No way to remove this or change the location.

2. Other agents can pay to have their open houses advertised to my clients via email. Regardless of whether or not I have a buyer broker agreement with clients, my association (via Listing Book) should not allow other agents to advertise their open houses to my clients via the email address I provided for my client.

3. If a client hasn't logged in to Listing Book for 30 days, the system automatically stops sending emails to them. No notice is given to the agent. (Many buyers on such a system are long-term buyers. Listing Book does not give you an option to extend this time frame).

4. Listing Book, in conjunction with your association, will offer free webinars giving market stats. Of course, the idea is to get the agents to buy ads for the listings and for their open houses. However, the market stats were WAY off when I have attended these webinars. The average days on market they reported were about 1/2 of what is actual. Their average sales prices were wrong.

There were a few other issues, too, but these are the ones that pop into my head immediately. I've discussed them all with both Listing Book and my MLS board. Listing Book responded to each issue with "Yeah, we know." No changes have ever been made. My MLS board really didn't want to hear about it (one response was, "Yeah, we know the market stats were all wrong during the webinar.")
 

There are other systems that agents can and should use to achieve the same purpose, without our clients being marketed to by other agents.

Don Fabrizio-Garcia
Broker
Danbury, Connecticut

For all the little glitches Listingbook has, our clients and prospects here in SW Florida love it because they feel they have some control over criteria changes. They have the sense that we are doing more than just an MLS portal. Life with Listingbook is better than life without it.

I agree Deborah! There are hundreds of real estate Web sites that today's savvy buyer can go to and get inaccurate information and see the listing agents contact information. As their agent... you would never know about it. Listingbook doesn't market other agent's information to your clients like other Web sites... sure they market open houses to your clients, but tells you about them too! Nothing is going to stop your buyer from taking a Sunday drive and stopping at some open houses, but Listingbook allows you to see what they see... and be proactive in how you nurture them as a client.

Tom, how is going so far in Florida?