Dec. 11, 2006 - Google Answers Zillow ... |
Realty Thoughts and the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal both are reporting that the Houston Association of Realtors has reached an agreement to post all of its MLS listings on Google Base.
Some may argue this is another step toward the imminent demise of the MLS; that conclusion makes little to no sense since the Houston area MLS is the vehicle through which these listings will be entered into Google. I would be willing to entertain arguments that this is another nail in the coffin of Realtor.com; while R.Com remains the dominant player for real estate listings (despite Zillow's traffic catching up, the big Z lacks the listings at this stage), signs of erosion are growing.
This agreement also likely will lead to the usual Chicken Little chirping from those who believe this will push Realtors closer to extinction. Aside from the immediate idiocy of the argument - who do you think is entering these listings into the MLS - and the general need to rationalize one's own decision to go it alone with real estate versus using an expert, this stance also assumes an unbreakable (but non-existent) link between Realtors and Realtor.com.
Back to this in a moment.
Says Bob Hale, president and CEO of HAR, "As far as I know, we're the first association in the country to put all of our listings on Google." Congratulations, Bob. I think. We only can assume (and/or hope) that Bob and his group asked the member brokerages before making the decision. This isn't to say the idea is poor but it does lead to other questions, such as those raised later in the San Jose Business Journal article ...
"Google won't sign a document to protect the data, and they won't sign a document to use it for limited reasons," says [James Harrison, president and CEO of REInfoLink, the Silicon Valley MLS service.] His agreements with the brokers who provide listings to REInfoLink limit what his company can do with the listings information, he says, and he legally cannot give Google more rights than that. ...
No matter how benign the relationship appears today, questions remain about Google's longer term strategy.
Will Google try to sell advertising around the content? Or ultimately will Google replicate a business model others have tried of seeking payment from local real estate agents for leads generated from the Web site traffic?
To its credit, Realtor.com does not sell its leads back out to the agents who are providing the content with their listings. But they do charge a fairly substantial sum, based on the number of listings an agent has, for "enhanced" listings that are more visible on the website. Pay an extra fee and you can add additional photos, get a pretty color border around your listing, etc.
Personally, I've yet to pay for a Realtor.com upgrade because I've not seen any value other than being able to tell the sellers "look at the pretty colors." There are reports that show the number of viewings each property has had - not bad for CYA - but most sellers are less interested in the number of showings as the number of offers they have received. To me, the value's just not there.
So to try and link my business to the fate of Realtor.com would be a mistake. And the same goes for the MLS, which I believe will remain if only because it still serves its original purpose - allowing brokerages to communicate listings to each other. Those who understand the basic premise of the MLS also will understand that the future of a local MLS is unrelated to all the other changes technology is bringing to the real estate industry.
Dissemination of listings to the public was an inevitable outgrowth of the Internet-drive communication revolution. But despite the increased visibility of these listings, the public is not a party to the MLS - not in its truest sense, not looking at it for its core purpose. While many agents still inexplicably tell clients that the MLS sells homes, adding to the misguided mystique, others of us are doing everything we can to market our homes outside the MLS. We are embracing the technology and leveraging it to our clients' advantage.
Back to the Houston MLS ... is the agreement with Google Base a good thing for sellers? Probably. For brokerages? Possibly. For agents? Time will tell. But, much as I feel with Zillow, I believe HAR should keep an eye out for the other shoe in case it drops.
(c) Jonathan Dalton, 2006 / Jonathan Dalton's Arizona Homes
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