I haven’t paid any attention to this MIBOR business, and I’m grateful to John Rowles for keeping us up to date. Anyone who is dismayed at the way things worked out should be sure to sit at my table when we have a BloodhoundBlog poker tournament: You’re my kind of sucker.
The fact that the NAR is composed of clueless morons should come as a surprise to no one. The fact that they think they can buy off their intellectual superiors by kissing their asses should astonish no one who reads here: I’ve been telling you for years that the dinosaurs pretend to take you seriously in the hopes of compromising you in their corruption. Of course, no one will learn a thing from this experience, which suggests that the dinosaur strategy might well be sound, even though it is absurd on its face. They reason that a grand pageant of being lied to and pandered to makes people feel important, and the evidence suggests they’ve got a good bead on their designated spokesmannequins.
But none of this has anything to do with anything. Whatever combination of cluelessness and collusion motivated this MIBOR clusterfrolick, it’s just a side effect. The NAR is a criminal cartel. Its purpose is to deploy legislation at the federal, state and local levels in behalf of real estate brokers and to the detriment of consumers (and, secondarily, real estate sales people). If you despise the NAR because it is technologically inept, you’re hating it for the wrong reasons. The right reason to detest the NAR, and to seek its extinction, is because it makes war upon the free market in order to expropriate unearned wealth for brokers.
Who pays for the tax deductibility of mortgages? The 70% or more of us who don’t qualify for the deduction. Who will pay for the $8,000 first-time home buyer’s tax credit? Your grandchildren — and it will cost them quite a bit more than $8,000 in interest costs. Thus do the vampires in the NAR make make vampires of us all.
If you want to grouse or joke about how stupid the NAR mandarins are, you will achieve nothing. If you insist that you can reform a crime syndicate by making yourself a part of it, may god have mercy on your soul. But you will not rid the world of cannibals by eating them. In the short run, we can obviate the NAR by supplanting it. But in the long run it must go the way of all dinosaurs. Whatever inane thrashing about it does in its death throes is entirely meaningless.
Benjamin Ficker says:
Great post Greg. I really get what you are saying with this, and I 100% agree. The problem is with actionable items to supplant the NAR. What would be the first steps to making some actual change at that level?
May 17, 2009 — 10:25 pm
Mike Stefonick says:
Greg,
You are right on track!
Well done!
Mike
May 18, 2009 — 5:25 am
John Rowles says:
You mentioned cannibalism at the end there, and it struck me that cannibalism is what the NAR is practicing by pitting the dinosaurs against the NAR members who understand how the Web works.
Yes, NAR exists to tilt the playing field in favor of brokers at the expense of consumers (and to run sugary PSA-lite TV ads on Sunday morning TV that assure us that “Now is a great time to buy” regardless) , and now it seems that it does so for the benefit of *some* of its members at the expense of others.
Specifically in the the case of MIBOR, it is advancing the interests of local boards who are desperate to remain relevant at the expense (literally) of the brokers and agents who are forced to use the one local service.
That is as blatant an example of eating your own I’ve seen out side of Silence of the Lambs.
May 18, 2009 — 6:42 am
Brandon says:
I have had two personal experiences with the NAR. In the first one, they sold my email address to hundreds of spammers who flooded my inbox with the latest real estate marketing “systems” or whatever. I asked a handful of them where they got my contact info, and they said they bought it from NAR / Realtor.com.
My second experience with this organization was when their legal department wrote me to issue a “cease and desist.” What heinous crime did I commit? I had the world Realtor written on my website without using all caps (though I did have the registration mark). This was back when the NAR was being sued by DOJ. I was baffled that they would have full-time staff scouring the Internet for proper usage of their marks, while being sued over their very was of doing business.
Slowly but surely, they are becoming an outmoded, outdated behemoth. I certainly won’t miss them.
May 18, 2009 — 7:38 am
rbboova says:
Greg, great post, you just instantly became one of my personal heroes in this business.
You’re welcome at my poker table anytime you are in Philly.
May 18, 2009 — 9:45 am
Thomas Johnson says:
Part of death throes is loss of bowel control. Stand clear of the behemoth. Stink is the least of our worries.
May 18, 2009 — 10:03 am
Jessica Horton says:
I have a plan. More later…
May 18, 2009 — 5:06 pm
Sue Zanzonico says:
“it makes war upon the free market in order to expropriate unearned wealth for brokers”
This is exactly right. Jessica, I can’t wait to hear your plan.
May 19, 2009 — 5:32 am
Jody Cowdrey says:
I’m all aboard. Let’s speed up this process. I hate that there’s the potential of my business being affected by one bonehead move after another, and my clients suffering because of it.
May 19, 2009 — 3:45 pm
Michael DiMella says:
Maybe I’m a little late to comment, but I just read the post, and since I’m not prepared to “lie and pander to you” Greg, I’m sorry, but this is just a plain silly post and you’re getting carried away.
Let me first state that I totally disagree with the board of director’s decision to send the MLS “scraping” issue back to committee for further study. That being said, this issue came up last minute (a few days before the meeting), and most of the directors (all volunteers by the way) were not able to discuss the issue to be able to appropriately make a decision. Some would say for any board to make the “safe” decision and try to get more information from a committee first may be a wiser decision. I disagree in this case, but it may just be the right course of action to prevent really bad decisions getting made on other issues because of lack of information.
I know I am probably wasting my words here, but you seem to have a thorough unwillingness to learn what NAR actually is and does. That doesn’t make you a bad guy, but I, for one, would appreciate a modicum of respect. (By the way, let me be clear, what I am writing here is entirely my personal opinion). But I am involved in the association (hence I am a “clueless moron”). I probably spend 10 hours per week on average (all unpaid volunteer hours by the way), working for my local association and state association, plus nationally for NAR. Why? Because I find it to be a very valuable experience for myself and for the other members I am helping (whether they recognize it or not) AND because it gives me a bigger toolbox to HELP CONSUMERS. Just so you know, I am a “little guy” – not a big broker, and most of the Realtor association leaders I know are “little guys” too – small brokerage owners and/or sales people.
I don’t agree with everything, some of the decisions made may be a bit archaic, and I do get a bit nervous when I occasionally see too much being done to try to help the lowest common denominator type members rather than just telling them “you’re not good enough for our association”. However, NAR is, at the end of the day, an association of 1.2M+- people with different opinions and skill-sets. Everyone, including those in leadership positions, will not agree with every decision made – there are simply too many opinions to agree on everything. Maybe without being slightly open-minded this hard to believe, but there is not some “criminal syndicate” running NAR for their personal gain. No conspiracy to harm consumers, no big broker cabal, no “consumer haters”, none of that. Maybe there are a few old school “dinosaurs” but NAR is a membership driven organization run by volunteer members (and some great paid staff too) who donate so much more time than you can imagine, and with VERY few exceptions, they do it to help other members AND consumers.
By the way, using your example for an illustration of what I just wrote, I don’t think the MID is good policy either (but I still would love to see where you found that 70% stat??). It should probably be removed from the tax code (along with about 1000 other pages of the code actually), but I am NOT in favor of removing it without a MAJOR overhaul and simplification of the tax code overall. To do so without that would be careless and have a major negative impact on a majority of Americans. So here, as with most items NAR lobbies for, I would say NAR’s support of the MID is well intentioned to protect consumers (and yes, NAR members too, which is what NAR exists to do).
As for the $8000 tax deduction, probably even my grandchildren will still be paying for it (and I’m 29 without any kids yet, nevermind grandkids), but many economists agree the only way we prevented this recession from getting much worse was spending and more spending. The alternative could be much worse. But I also know it certainly will be debated in economic textbooks for years. So saying NAR’s support of it makes vampires is simply insane. It’s nothing but a policy disagreement you may have, not a criminal act by NAR.
Getting back on topic – If you want to create the National Asso of alternative real estate people by all means, go ahead – that’s the beauty of America. But maybe trying the open-minded route first will help (especially if you ever get to be a very large organization and you have angry people sniping from the sidelines). I, for one, believe change from the inside out is more effective in this case because of the huge resources to leverage. Plus many of the “dinosaurs” are already gone or going quickly. But I guess this is all “meaningless thrashing” so thank you for praying for me.
May 19, 2009 — 6:47 pm