Reacting to John Rowles’ post, Jim Duncan has been talking about the RPR idea for years, and I read a little more about it today, having been tipped over the weekend by Tom Johnson. My take: Yawn.
RPR is not the generals fighting the last war, but the war before that. Apparently, the NAR still believes that the added value of real estate representation comes from hoarding data. RPR is their attempt to put a new fence around the data, having let the last set of barriers fall to Realtor.com and to IDX.
It’s twice funny to me, because not only is that war already well won — by the consumer — so is the true last war, the Battle of the Realty.bots. After all of this chatter, none of this shit has turned out to mean anything in real life.
I mean nothing. I’m convinced by now that no one who does not actually represent buyers and sellers has any clue about what is going on in the real estate market. We don’t search for listings — our clients do — and our position is stronger than ever. We post our listings wherever we can — and our position is stronger than ever.
I’m no friend to any restraint or restriction on trade, but buying or selling a home is a lot more complicated than it was four years ago. Our clients don’t need flashy web sites, they need agents who know how to navigate the shoals of the transaction.
RPR, MLS, VOW, IDX — all of this goes away when we do away with the co-broke. In the mean time, it’s deck chairs on the Titanic, at best, one more dipshit time-wasting “tool” to mask sales-call reluctance.
Notes for the grunts on the ground:
1. Motivated buyers and sellers will not go through a middleman in the early phases of their search. This is 1974-style thinking from the NAR.
2. Motivated buyers and sellers don’t care how they found you. They care about what they found: Do you know your shit? Can you deliver the product? Is your word any good?
3. Whether or not the information you have is better than the information they have is meaningless — to them — until they have resolved to rely on your judgment.
Ergo: There ain’t no substitute for salesmanship.
I’ll play with this toy when it comes around, but that’s because I’ll play with anything. My IDX software is the same as my MLS software (FlexMLS from FBS), and so my clients are searching from the exact same database I use. This is a huge marketing benefit, one that will not be easily replaced.
Even so, the notion of a national MLS is absurd, so it’s most likely purpose is not to re-enslave the data (impossible), but, rather, to attempt to re-enslave the agents. Even that objective would seem to be doomed to failure, but it’s another problem easily corrected by getting rid of the co-broke.
Meanwhile: I don’t care.
Al Lorenz says:
Greg,
But are you excited about search engines no longer being considered “scraper” sites? I am guessing there will be a post from Ryan soon on how we can capitalize on having indexed data on our web sites that can do some SEO magic may have created more friction in the past.
November 17, 2009 — 1:34 pm
Greg Swann says:
> having indexed data on our web sites that can do some SEO magic
I don’t love raw listings as content, but I’m not sure any of that matters, either.
November 17, 2009 — 3:03 pm
Michael Wurzer says:
Here’s a wacky theory for you:
* RPR is being positioned as “not an MLS” because it has no offer of cooperation or compensation;
* However, many suggest that, in all other respects, RPR is being positioned as a national MLS; and
* So, maybe NAR agrees with you (and Jim Duncan and many others) and if RPR becomes the MLS, the co-broke will go away.
Crazy, right?
November 17, 2009 — 1:40 pm
Greg Swann says:
> So, maybe NAR agrees with you (and Jim Duncan and many others) and if RPR becomes the MLS, the co-broke will go away.
> Crazy, right?
Indeed. Completely implausible.
The listings themselves will all have co-brokes, if they are coming from the existing MLS monopolies. My guess is that the NAR is omitting the co-broke to avoid having to comply with 900 sets of rules, no two alike but all of them miserly and morally wretched.
Here’s a more plausible theory, IMO:
The NAR is simultaneously buying out Marty Frame and serving as the undisclosed VC for a new business that will be spun off to Frame and his buddies, Realtor.com-style, once it starts to show positive cash flow. This generation of NAR poobahs will get their bribes, and the agents and the MLS systems will buy more anal anesthetics. That’s a proposition that conforms to the known proclivities of the specimens under consideration.
But no matter what, the co-broke can’t go away until lenders declare themselves willing to countenance compensation to the buyer’s broker being recorded on the HUD-1 as coming from the lender, rather than first having been transferred (by bookkeeping sleight-of-mind) to the seller.
And once that happens, all bets are off. Your company and every other software company become equally viable competitors for the real estate listings business, since no co-broke implies no monopoly, no secrecy and no limits to access. Also: No more NAR, which is why what is happening with RPR will not affect the MLS monopoly logic in any way. Without the co-broke, the entire house of cards tumbles to the ground.
An observation: There is no blue ocean in horizontal software applications. A first-mover like Zillow is alone for almost no time, and competition for end-users then becomes a losing race to stay ahead of every reverse engineer your formerly blue ocean made possible.
Another: You, Michael Wurzer, have an obvious interest in maintaining the co-broke: No co-broke, no monopoly MLS, no vertical-market client base for FBS. Why are all the real estate consultants on the side of the co-broke? They all know it’s anti-consumer. Why are they always to be found on the NAR’s side of the carnival booth? I’m thinking that thoughtful agents can work this one out for themselves.
November 17, 2009 — 3:43 pm
Barry Lynn Miller says:
Why is everybody trying to re invent the wheel NAR wants more and more agents because that’s how they make their money $100 or so at a time. Why no scale back and let the wolfs eat the sheep, survival of the fittest, and all those other terms.
Question of the day
“Do you want fries with that Open House”
November 17, 2009 — 1:49 pm
Brandon says:
Agreed. I’m fairly impartial on the subject but if backed into a corner – I say let the information be *fairly* open. Being a member of MLS’ in two states I can see the vast differences.
Idaho doesn’t report sales to the Assessors office, the MLS holds all sale data… nearly impossible to get comps without an agent. In WA we can see all the sales data.
I think google indexing is great. Whatever causes my listing to sell, in my opinion, is a great thing 🙂
November 17, 2009 — 1:57 pm
Theresa Lussier says:
>Notes for the grunts on the ground:
(…)
>Ergo: There ain’t no substitute for salesmanship.
That’s what I’m thinking, Greg. Although I find it very easy (being a twitter goddess and all) to get caught up in psuedo-debates and chest-beating and teeth-gnashing and ass-kissing discussions about any number of news-that’s-not-news from the NAR (and the twittering bevy of vendorsluts), in the end, from my end of the NAR (guess which end that is), it always always always comes down to how I am doing as a salesperson.
Going into a forced sabbatical from business gave me time and head space to tune out noise and focus on business basics. It all comes down to sales. I can now see clearly that I/we have something of real value to offer people and it ain’t access to the MLS.
November 18, 2009 — 5:36 am
Greg Swann says:
There’s one other suspicion I had about RPR that I want to throw out there:
The American Medical Association does not represent doctors. The AMA makes most of its money by managing Medicare codes for the feds, with the result that it has steadily betrayed the interests of doctors, with doctors quitting the AMA in droves. For PR purposes, the tendentious media likes to portray the AMA as representing doctors, but this has not been true for years.
Now imagine if RPR is being built to provide an alternate source of funding for the NAR. They’re snakes in the grass now, but imagine how much worse they could be if they didn’t have to appeal to the membership for funding.
The more the various slimy tentacles of the NAR get into the software business, the less I like them.
November 19, 2009 — 10:32 am
Scott Cowan says:
@Terry and the choir rose up and sang “AMEN” to your statement!
“I/we have something of real value to offer people and it ain’t access to the MLS.”
Thank you for putting the cherry on the top of the sundae. You and Greg are both spot on. The ability to provide guidance and to be the best salesperson we can be are the keys to our successes as real estate “salespersons”
November 18, 2009 — 9:42 am
Thomas Johnson says:
The latest on the Reaper from my friendly Houston Association of Realtors director is that HARMLS is in wait and see mode. HAR is the largest Realtor Association in the country and HAR is run by a host of Inman Innovators of the Year. When I saw that our fearless Inman Men were not on the stage with the NAR poobahs at Reaper Roll-out, my gut told me that Notorious ROB is on to something
http://www.notorious-rob.com/2009/11/14/in-which-i-announce-the-death-of-rpr/.
The $20 million RPR is DOA without kickbacks (sorry, revenue sharing) to the local MLS’s. HARMLS’ revenue for the Zillow/Trulia and whoever else they sold the data to is not enough to even power the servers every month. I get the feeling that they want the RPR to be the big score for “their data”. I mean, the member broker’s listings.
Now, back to hunting sellers with equity…
November 18, 2009 — 11:48 am
Keahi Pelayo says:
Based on your comments and others that I have read, Reaper is not good.
Aloha,
Keahi
November 18, 2009 — 4:36 pm
Ashlee Pannell says:
Very intersting post.
November 18, 2009 — 7:27 pm
Susan says:
The only positive I see is that RPR is free. Currently we are paying quite a bit in mls fees so all these local mls can buy and maintain an mls system. Having a free alternative from NAR is pretty interesting just to avoid the mls fees.
Even if mls’s dont give over there data I think the large brokerages will give over their data so the listings can appear on the RPR site. And once RPR gets enough listings I see agents questioning whether they want to continue to hand over money each month to a local mls to access data they are already able to access for free.
November 19, 2009 — 10:09 am
Greg Swann says:
> And once RPR gets enough listings I see agents questioning whether they want to continue to hand over money each month to a local mls to access data they are already able to access for free.
Now that’s an interesting take on the matter. I love the idea of these vampires sucking on each other’s throats instead of ours.
November 19, 2009 — 10:22 am