Frankly Speaking

A troubling wind is blowing and the destruction it leads too if left unchecked could lead to a serious black eye for our industry. Most everyone knows that it is our (REALTOR) code of ethics that separates us from other licensees. It is these code of ethics that establishes our conduct, standards of performance and customer care. And, it is our Code of Ethics on which we lean when we seek to rehabilitate an agent who fails to live up to those standards.  Consumers on both sides of the transaction can be hurt. So with that I will (if you will indulge me) lay out for you the Anatomy Of A 400 Day Listing. Keep the listing out of the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) with the intent of securing the buyer        yourself. Historically it has been the "Best Practices" of  the National Association of REALTORS(R) (NAR), and of most MLS service providers that a listing be put in the MLS within the first 24-48 hours of a listing contract being executed. Fail...

The thing I love most about Keller Williams is their commitment to evolving in order to meet the needs of our ever changing industry. Simply stated, they don't want to get it done. They want to get it right. This is a great company to be in business with. Keller Williams Realty Changing The Way We Do Real Estate

By supplying Zillow with our data, and buying back our leads, we are propagating a scenario where the REALTOR component is removed from the equation. Our greatest value to our clients is the ability to explain the process, the forms, and assist in the achievement of the consumers goals. Going virtual, marginalizing the value of human interaction, is a dangerous and slippery slope. The Future of Real Estate Professionals? | Zillow Acquisition of DotLoop

For most of my career Real Estate Professionals have been locked out of certain market areas. My first experience with this was when a neighboring association left our local MLS to join another MLS provider. Agents in our association no longer had access to the data from the community on our Eastern Borders. Likewise, their agents could not access ours. To be perfectly blunt it was a catastrophe. And, it had nothing to do with the technology. It simply was a matter of politics. It soon became apparent that for the good of the membership we had to change MLS providers and do so quickly. Today we are at a similar crossroad. Many local MLS providers have elected to prevent access to their data to anyone who is not a subscriber to their services. Set aside for a moment that this might just walk, talk and smell like a violation of our Code of Ethics ("Cooperate With Other Brokers"). This also does a disservice to the general public. Let me explain. Say that I am a seller in th...