A few of the comments on my last post about the moves Google seems to be making in the direction of a more robust National Real Estate search have focused on what this means for MLS.
The consensus (hope?) is that Google’s move in that direction, as well as RPR, are bad news for MLS.
Maybe. Probably. But not necessarily so: There is a case to be made for the value of the local MLS in terms of Quality Assurance.
Google wants to index information, not create or validate it (think automation vs manual processes), but if Google Real Estate were riddled with inaccurate listing data, if users were consistently finding listings that are no longer for sale or that have the wrong price, that would degrade the user experience, and that is probably more important to Google than anything else, which may explain why they haven’t, and might not, leverage their position as the conduit through which most real estate traffic flows by creating a Google MLS.
The way it works now, Google’s RE data, accurate or not, leads to sites where changes entered into MLS are quickly reflected. MLS also ensures that only its members contribute listings, so there is some vetting there, as well. As a source of QA that Google does not have to set up and manage itself, the local MLS serves a purpose.
The problem is that lots of MLSs are not going to be happy with going back to their original, limited role of organizing a local market among brokers. They will be loathe to give up on the idea of “adding value” (IOW justifying fees) with things like public-facing Web sites. They also, in many cases, see themselves as a bulwark against change that they don’t like, hence their role as the enforcers of rules meant to “protect” the traditional industry — to the detriment of consumers.
(Exhibit A: MIBOR’s attempt to use NAR IDX rules to label Google a “scraper”.)
As long as that is the case, we are stuck with the balkanized, inefficient and anti-consumer “system” we have now, and that is what makes it ripe for Google to dis-intermediate it.
MLSs could save themselves by working with Google (and RPR for that matter) as the guardians of the upload, but if history is any guide, they won’t. Instead, they will assume that the status quo is unassailable, that they “own” the upload and the data it brings, will use that position to obstruct the free flow of information as long as they can, and then will wonder why their membership abandons them (the way advertisers abandoned newspapers) when Google (and perhaps RPR) open a FREE upload channel around them like the one I sketched out in my last post.
It is literally the nature of the network to route around obstacles, as the music and newspaper industries (although Rupert Murdoch still doesn’t get it as he is trying to stuff the denture cream back into the tube) have discovered, but my bet is that the MLSs, dominated by people in Murdoch’s demographic, will make the same mistake.
Mark Madsen says:
Thank you for the insight, John.
I’ve been following your work with http://www.mainrhode.com/ since you joined BHB, so I definitely believe that you’re the right person to keep us in the loop with these types of updates.
I’m building a series of MU city real estate blogs with a major focus on the listings’ integration with all Google has to offer. Looking forward to future posts and Edu from you about this topic.
mm
November 23, 2009 — 9:01 am
Barry Lynn Miller says:
Most website listings are Iframed in and I could be wrond but google doesn’t index I frames whats a good alternative so that Google will index
November 23, 2009 — 5:04 pm
Greg Swann says:
I should probably write something about this, but here’s the Cliff’s Notes: I’m not seeing any of this. The old-timers think listings sell houses. The NAR — and apparently RPR — think listings sell houses. I think this is a bogus argument. Marketing sells houses, and the only reason we don’t already understand this is because Realtors suck at marketing. The entire real estate market is howling for help from good salespeople, and all we can think of to do give them a bad form to fill out on line. I think this is a mistake. In a red hot seller’s market, marketing still makes a difference. In this market, it’s a 25% difference on the bottom line. Accumulations of listings are everywhere. They matter just like the YP app on my iPhone matters. But salespeople make sales, and good salespeople make things happen.
When I talk about divorcing the commissions, the big fear is that buyers will skip representation and buy from listers. When listers talk about Google, they tell each other that being a walking catalog of details is all they’re good for. Only in the world of bubblebrains and Freakonomists are real estate salespeople omitted from the process — and then only in the imagination. The things we do to sell houses are the things everyone will be doing five years from now — the good agents are already doing amazing things. And representing buyers gets more complicated month by month. Reports of our demise are not just premature but absurd. Good marketing and good salesmanship are more integral to the process than ever before. We might flush the bums — and may god make it soon — but the future is bright for hard-working dogs.
November 23, 2009 — 11:36 pm
John Rowles says:
@Greg: I absolutely agree with you that listings, left untouched, are not a form of effective marketing.
My biggest frustration with many of the agents who work for our clients is that most simply refuse to use our platform to enhance the basic content that comes out of IDX, even though we explain that differentiating the content on their own sites is a crucial SEO step, and SEO is a form of effective marketing.
These are often the agents who, having done nothing but get their credit card dinged, will cancel complaining that we “didn’t do anything for them”.
They believe, as you say, that filling out a stupid form for the MLS and planting a sign in the ground constitute the entirety of their marketing responsibilities and that if our technology were any good it would elevate their non-effort above other agent’s identical non-efforts.
That said (shout out to all you Curb Your Enthusiasm fans out there), listings and, more specifically, how they are found, do matter because they are still the baseline for marketing a property.
Yes, when buyers start on Google and an agent has set up a good, single-listing site and that buyer is looking for that listing or one like it in the area, that site will trump aggregators like Realtor.com Trulia.
That is good marketing, but there will still be people who use those sites and listings are still their core offering, and a good marketer needs to have a strategy for finding their buyer in that audience.
Finally, keeping an eye on what Google does as it relates to real estate is also a function of marketing.
Dogs who understand the implications of Google flexing its muscles in this space and see it coming can and will react to the new reality faster than behemoth organizations like franchise operators, MLSs, and NAR will. There is a competitive advantage to be had there for the nimble, and that is what we’re all about, isn’t it?
November 24, 2009 — 6:40 am
James Boyer says:
I don’t know about Google setting up a national MLS, but I will say that the consumer is going to Google quite a lot looking for information on real estate in the areas they are interested in.
You are right about the mls’s being run by the old thinkers who will likely make the same mistakes over and over. The real estate industry is changing, it is just that 95% of those involved just don’t realize it yet.
November 24, 2009 — 7:55 am
DJ Morris says:
Scary! It makes me wonder if our future as Realtors might be in jeopardy with Google, Zillow, etc…
November 24, 2009 — 8:03 am
John Rowles says:
@DJ: Why “scary”? See Greg’s comment above — none of this matters at the tree level (vs. the forest), if you are one of the real estate professionals who have a marketing strategy that doesn’t begin and end with entering a listing into the MLS.
At the forest level — the MLS, NAR and franchise level, you are absolutely right, Google getting more directly involved is scary because it threatens the inefficiency on which they rely to maintain their relevance, often to the detriment and, literally, expense of working agents and brokers.
As this unfolds, we may spot opportunities to take advantage of the new world order at the outset, and that is why its worth watching.
But don’t fear change, b/c that is the reaction the middlemen are counting on. They will play to those fears to maintain the status quo, not unlike the tactics the private health insurance industry is deploying these days. (And that is neither support or criticism of the current bill, its just an observation that, agree with a “public option” or not, the fear card is being played to some success.)
November 24, 2009 — 8:43 am
harry cross says:
I am one of those old dogs who sits on an MLS Borad. Been at this 36 years, but only the last 5 count because the environment has changed so much.
I think all of you have some truth in your opinions. who knows where all this is really headed, but it is definitly going to change the industry as we know it.
Our Tech Committee is our most active and challenging committee to serve on. The changes are coming fast and most of them from outside the industry.
Anyone want to give some insite where they think all this is headed?
November 24, 2009 — 6:07 pm
John Rowles says:
@Harry: I was at a Tony Bennett show at the Newport Jazz Fest a few years ago and a guy down front shouted “Sing it, Tony!” and Tony paused, mid-song, looked at him and said,
“What the Hell do ya think I’m doing?”
Kidding aside, you tell me… Have you seen anything hit MLS people between the eyes like the RPR news?
Do you think it makes sense that there should be 900+ local boards like yours parsing a set of technology rules on a case-by-case basis and often with their own agendas in mind?
The fact is brokers don’t need their MLS to reach homebuyers as it is. There are any number of ways to get listings into Google without an MLS#. They just aren’t entrenched, super easy or popular — yet.
November 25, 2009 — 7:32 am
David Lorti says:
Interesting article. Thanks for the discussion.
I have to say that it isn’t what you report on that Google may be pursuing that would concern me, it’s the creative aspects that Google has delivered in other areas and could deliver here that would concern me from a Realtor perspective.
Google folks are smart enough to know that it will take more than just a repository or master db of property listings, it will take full-scale integration and people systems to make it truly something that could rock the real estate arena to the core.
November 25, 2009 — 7:11 pm