Realtor...Did You Check your Client Score Today?

Things are about to get real interesting.  In a move that is going to take the term personal referral to a whole new level, consumers are gearing up to go-online with websites that offer rating systems for a number of different professions and services.  These include, doctors, professors, and yes...Realtors. 

I first heard about this trend from  TV program which broadcast the story of a young man who was being totally raked over by a website on which former girlfriends and dates where dogging him as a dating disaster.  The man was protesting about these indictments about his poor dating etiquette and his personal grooming habits or lack of them.  But the posts on the site clearly decried a different reality.  This dejected suitor was even considering suing to try to get his reputation back as his new found publicity was creating major hassles with new prospects!

Well, it's not just the dating scene which is experiencing this new version of Referral 2.0.  Just about every profession  now has a nascent, consumer driven, on-line ratings website being launched or in the process of being constructed.  RateMDs.com allows you to rate practitioners in the medical community.  For the first time, patients are taking the vital statistics and creating a diagnosis about the quality of care and competence of the physician.  Physicians are rated on the basis of punctuality, helpfulness and general knowledge and are given an overall grade complete with a smiley or frowny face to make the point!

In case you're wondering, yes rateyourrealtor.com, rateyourrealtor.net and rateyourrealtor.org are already taken as a registered domain names, although to date the web sites have not yet been launched.  This is not to be confused with approvedrealtor.com which promises to link consumers with the best Realtors, for a fee of course, of $250 - satisfaction guaranteed.

The proliferation of information through the Internet makes this an inevitable next step to the need to make sense of an overwhelming amount of data. In the case of professional services, people crave the ability to investigate behind the cloistered ranks of degrees, certifications, networks, and organizations which often seem to primarliy serve to benefit and enhance the reputation of the expert.  More importantly in the eyes of the public, this may provide the first opportunity for unvarnished evaluations of the actual skill with which a discipline is practiced.

But, I can also see the potential for abuse or misapplication of this type of ratings system.  As in the case of My Man, the guy seriously dissed by ex-girlfriends, it is probably not possible to know whether these evaluations are completely true.  What  if he is the victim of a malicious woman and her friends.  This forum has judged him, tried him and hanged him in the court of public opinion and then tagged him with a label which will follow his name on-line for a very long time.  I remember watching the piece and thinking "How will he get his reputation back?"  Even if he sued, the search engines have archived this incident in his life and thereby placed its status in the realm of infinity.

 I don't think most Realtors are aware that these rating services are being launched.  There is no regulation about who can post and as far as I can tell from the sites, there is no independent verification that the individual creating the entry is actually a client of the professional being profiled.  On the RateMDs.com website, there was no option for the physician to respond to allegations; some of which were quite troubling. There is something inherently unsettling about a forum which allows total anonymity to a potential reputation assassin and denies a platform to the accused.  In an on-line article entitled New Tech Trends Rock the Real Estate World , Les Christies of CNNMoney.com writes about how this type of "social networking" will overwhelm real estate in the next 12 months.

I'd like to know your thoughts about this trend.  Is this type of rating already occurring in your area?  How do you see the upsurge in Real Estate Blogging interacting with this new form of "social networking"? 

A final note...rateyourloanofficer.com did not match up with my search on google.  Hm....I wonder why???

©2006 Audu Real Estate  All rights reserved

Peering Through the Bubble & Climbing the Palaver Tree!

"We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! "

1 Corinthians 13:12  Quote from Message Bible

On any given sunny day, all along the African coastline, discussions range from the mundane to the serious, but without fail, the colorful, often loud and lyrical prose of spirited discussion usually includes at least a little of what is known in colloquial terms as "palaver" .  As a child, I was warned not to create "palaver" an admonition which usually occurred when I was about to involve myself in some major mischief.  I always equated palaver with confusion and trouble. However, a recent google search revealed over 813,000 results for this enigma of a word.

One thing is clear, palaver is generated by people. It's an oral tradition which affixes meaning to events sometimes with little relevance to the actual facts at hand.  It is also closely related to tribal wisdom and strives to create sense out of the insensibility and foggy events of everyday realities.

For a couple years, the chieftains of media have pronounced the source of all the mischief in the real estate industry. The palaver was re-packaged in western terminology as the bubble.  The trouble was the bubble...whatever that was....it was growing too big, it was in danger of exploding and creating even more trouble...more palaver.  It took some doing, as palaver often does;  for palaver usually requires a catalyst or initiator to really get it going.  So as the bubble, which the media chieftains defined as the healthy real estate industry,  grew more rotund it needed more and more hot air to make it grow larger so it would finally do something...like burst!

In regions like the Midwest and communties such as Grand Rapids, Michigan, the whirlwind gathered gusto and grew the bubble, such as it was, very large.  The furor was fueled by wars, and rumors of wars, lay-offs and corporate closings and finally the auto makers joined the fray in announcing record losses.  Just like the childhood story of the big bad wolf that huffed and puffed until the house fell down, the bubble began to wobble and dance and shimmy dangerously...definitely the stuff of palaver.

But is palaver real?  According to wordhut.com, palaver can be described as "

1. (n) loud and confused and empty talk; "mere rhetoric"

2. (n) flattery intended to persuade

3. (v) have a lengthy discussion, usually between people of different backgrounds

4. (v) influence or urge by gentle urging, caressing, or flattering; "He palavered her into going along"

5. (v) speak (about unimportant matters) rapidly and incessantly

As, I reviewed the sales statistics of the last year at the Grand Rapids Real Estate Board, there are mixed results.  The last 2 years have been challenging, but to hear folks talk at the water cooler, this year was definitely worse than last.  The statistics show something different.  In comparing the last 2 quarters of 2005 with the last 2 quarters of 2006, Kent County had a POSITIVE correlation  in the average price listed to average home sale price.  (2005 - 85.4% to 2006 - 91.3%).  This means that although there were more homes on the market this year, home purchases in the last 2 quarters of 2006 closed for almost 10% more than last year.  This is good news.  I heard a newscast in December which mentioned a 3.4% increase in sales activity nationwide.  In Ottawa County, the difference was not as dramatic, but it was still there (2005 - 82.6% of List price on average vs. 2006 - 85.3% of list price.) While it's not raining "hallelujah" yet, things could be a whole lot worse!

 A wonderful Mentor has always encouraged me to look for the trends that "whisper" long before the loud broadcast begins.  We are still in the midst of a correction here in Michigan, but not a bubble.  There is nothing to burst, as we have always had a conservative, balanced increase in our market which averaged between 3-5%.  In December of 2006, single family home sales increased from 605 units to 682, a 12.7% improvement over 2005.  So, in 2007, let's AVOID the palaver, Realtors on the ground, doing transactions daily are not "peering through a glass dimly" or trying to cajole meaning through the warped frame of a bubble.  We can choose to create a solid reality through our diligence and hard work.  I think that when the weather clears, we will all be surprised to see the changes the wind blew in!

 African tradition also incorporates another very different framework for the word palaver.  It is referred to in the context of the Palaver Tree.  In this forum, the very best of indigenous African culture and oral tradition can be experienced.  The Palaver Tree is the African "tribal council", a forum where the issues and problems of the day are discussed with input and wise guidance from village elders who may be men or women.  In this way, problematic issues find resolution after much discussion and debate.  It seems to me, that the Active Rain Network and Realtown Blogs are modern cyber versions of the Palaver Tree!