The Odysseus Medal: “Small pieces loosely joined”

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

My thought is that Michael Wurzer of the FBS blog doesn’t do anything badly. Certainly his weblog is ripe with first-rate content. Michael is this week’s winner of The Odysseus Medal with Data Portability Ain’t Just A Real Estate Problem:

You see, whether it’s in an MLS or a social network, the value is in having the data together or aggregated. Yet, once you aggregate the data, in an MLS system or Facebook or wherever, the immediate question is how you can get it back out to be used elsewhere, by other applications, because choice is desired and the aggregation stifles choice.

This is a non-trivial problem. The ideal answer is in the web itself. As Tim O’Reilly puts it, “Small pieces loosely joined.” Yet the web, in its current form, doesn’t address all the concerns, because yet to be defined are permission or privacy or identity schemes. In other words, who owns the data, who can access it, and what can they do with it when they do access it? The answers to these questions so far have been defined by silos, like MLS systems and social networks, but we’re now seeing that isn’t the long-term answer, rather standards are.

In the real estate space, one part of the solution is to have a broad and deep agreement (standard) on the minimum data necessary to constitute a listing. This is close to reality with the RETS payloads. Equally necessary, however, is a standard for defining who can access the listing and the terms of use for doing so. The first attempts at some terms of use in the real estate space led to the lawsuit against the NAR by the DOJ, which necessarily but unfortunately has caused the conversation to grind to a halt as the status quo is sought to be preserved. But the work on these terms of use needs to continue, either to resolve the litigation or end-run it.

Ideally, the terms of use should be dictated by the owner of the data on an individual basis. Again, “small pieces loosely joined.” Yet the challenge is gaining broad enough agreement to create the aggregation that produces the value in the data in the first instance. One listing, on its own, is nearly worthless. Similarly, in the social networking world, a personal profile without friends is nearly worthless. The aggregation and network is what provides value and in the real estate space, the aggregation needs to be really large; ideally complete, or someone misses out on their dream home.

All of which brings us back to the silo, for that is where the aggregation occurs most easily, at least in the short term. This is why I have recommended a national repository with contributory right of download. If an MLS puts data in, the MLS can take data out, which could make MLSs competitors to each other in a very short period of time using existing technology and infrastructure while also preserving the cooperation necessary to create the aggregation in the first instance.

The Black Pearl Award goes to Doug Quance for We Can Just Stay Home And Go Broke:

Fast forward to today – a vacant house, the holidays coming, two house payments (one for this proverbial dead horse) and the sellers are out shopping for a new agent.

Did I mention that this home is in a cluster home community that has an association fee of over $2700 a year? It is – and that fee is rather high for a home at this price point.

And did I mention that there’s no bathtub in the master? The sellers didn’t have the builder install one… and since this home has no basement and sits on a slab foundation – installing one is pretty much out of the question.

Since I would have to invest over sixty hours into the technical marketing of this home (photography, post processing, building the website, etc.) I insisted that we not take this listing for more than $350K… and if so, I would not participate – and my fellow broker agreed.

Well the sellers would only come down another $5000 – and although we would love to have the listing… we declined to list this property.

While there are many agents out  there who simply hang a lockbox on the door and stab a sign in the yard – that’s not us. We do so much more.

And we’re not going to work for free. Like the last agent.

After all – we can just stay home and go broke.

I wrestled with myself over this one. It’s not an original idea, and some might say it’s obvious. But clearly it’s an idea that needs to be promoted — or else we wouldn’t have these vast inventories of overpriced homes.

Justin Smith wins this week’s People’s Choice Award with How I Sold My ActiveRain Profile for $6,750.00:

You heard it here folks.  Damion Foxworthy is now the proud new owner of my ActiveRain profile.  The story behind the sale follows…I’m sure many of you have heard the controversy about the sale of MMORPG characters and goods.  It is quite an industry actually, complete with overseas sweatshops where workers will spend hours mining for gold in World of Warcraft, or building up an Everquest Character for resale.  You can even buy 50,000 “Linden” dollars on ebay for only $199.99, in the popular online universe known as second life.  I even wrote a post about it a while back that discussed the implications of a lady that became the first millionaire from selling virtual goods.

It’s an interesting topic… and it got me thinking.  If people can sell virtual goods and money, why not ActiveRain points?   ActiveRain isn’t a game or an online virtual world, but it does deal with a potential commodity called: points.

In the early days of ActiveRain, it was pretty common to see people gaming the system for points.  Writing 10 junk posts a day, or commenting 50 times a day just to build their points.  But as AR has evolved there have been measures put in to make sure that in order for people to get ahead, they have to actually work at it.  Which makes the points that much more valuable.

Let’s discuss the value of points for a moment…  As most of you know, points can help you get ahead of your competition in any given market.  You can see here that I am currently listed in Colorado.  Ranked 7th in Colorado, 2nd in Douglas County, and 1st in the town of Castle Rock.  Not Bad!

Justin spammed the voting by emailing all his friends and telling them to vote for him. This was twice foolish. Why twice? Because he had already won the competition with honest, authentic, organic votes before he discovered that he had been nominated. And because we are not measuring a nominee’s spam potential but the honest, authentic, organic response the nominated post elicits among readers. I don’t like rules, but I do like for people to behave as they would want other people to behave if the tables were turned. So: Congratulations, Justin, despite willfully risking disqualification.

Nota bene: If you didn’t check out this week’s nominees for The Odysseus Medal, you should. As always, if you come upon a spark of the divine, nominate it.

Deadline for next week’s competition is Sunday at 12 Noon MST. You can nominate your own work or any post you admire here.

Congratulations to the winners — and to everyone who participated.

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