1. I find an agency web site in the area, look at the houses and realize that other properties that I know are available in the area are not listed on their site. Does the broker think that people looking at their web site are as computer illiterate as they apparently must be? This is a poor business model, and the brokerage will not get my business.

2. I visit a broker and hit it off; this is the person I want to work with. They give me their site URL and I look at some properties. I stop back in to talk to them, and they bring up the same property on their ID and passsword from the web, and son-of-a-gun if they don't have twice the listing information I saw on the web, price history, neighborhood, model of home, more pictures, etc. “If this was on the web,” they say, “you wouldn't need me.” On the contrary. I need an agent to get me into the place to look at it; I'll need their legal advice, procedural advice, contracting advice, etc. Ignoring for the moment that in the final analysis agents and brokers work for the seller, their job is to connect me with a house that I will spend my hard-earned money to buy. Whenever information is withheld – for any reason – the consumer has to wonder: “What else am I not able to find out about this?”

3. I go into my agent's office. They log onto their web site and begin showing me listings. After 20 or so, my eyes begin to glaze over, having seen nothing of any interest. Did they ask me what I wanted first? Of course, but without a photographic memory of the details of every listing, the agent is wandering around the listings somewhat aimlessly. Search parameters? Sure, but how do I know if a particular house in a particular neighborhood is over-priced, or one that the agent has personally listed? Not enough information. After three hours, nothing meaningful has been accomplished – unless you consider that in this RE market the agent probably would have bored stiff with otherwise nothing to do. Here's an idea, give me a quick tour of how to use the tools, turn the keyboard over to me, then leave the room so I can do my own searching in the fastest time. When I find something I'm interested in, I'll step into your office and tell you that something interesting has come up, and we can proceed. I'm sorry to have to say this, but most 10-year olds have more computer savy than your average real estate agent; so too do an awful lot of your customers.

Standardized formats? Screen-scrapers so I can download the information into a spreadsheet so I can do my own comparisons, or for that matter, how about a spreadsheet view of all of the listings that is already in Excel format so I can pull it down and look at it at? Too much information for the customer? Makes it too easy for “someone else” to aggregate the information and “work around” the agent?

Here's are a few things to consider thoughtfully and thoroughly:

1. You can list 100 properties a week, and, true, the seller pays the commission – theoretically – but if you never sell one of those properties you won't make five cents. How is limiting the exposure of the properties you hope to sell a good thing? Who cares where a customer finds it? Certainly not the customer.

2. For the most part, if you're under the age of 40, you've grown up on the web, you're used to finding information there in abundance, and you don't make any purchases, be they appliances, cars, TVs, computers, etc. without a thorough web search to compare features, availability and prices. Once you've decided what you want to buy you look for local availability and support and price in combination. You may change your selection based on those criteria, and you'll bargain for the best local price. Even Sears, for goodness sake, will “match anyone's advertised prices.” And brokers and agents want to limit the information they put on a web site? I'm likely to find the brokerage with the best information on the web, then work with an agent at that agency rather than screw around with an agent who publishes one set of info to the web but keeps the best stuff where I have to go into their office everytime I want more details. Who wouldn't? It's just a matter of time before I find that agency with the best and most easily digestible information and the ability to do meaningful comparisons; they'll then get my business.

3. A lot of things worked in 2004 that are now out of step with the current RE market. In the stock market they say that a bull market makes everyone feel like an investing genius. It's now a buyer's market, and I see price reductions every day on the listings I follow. Lots of listings are embarrassments; many prices are too high. If you're over “a certain age” you're desire to keep information private or less publicized is an impediment to your future success, though you don't see it that way. That “this is the information age” isn't just a slogan; it's a fact of life you ignore at your own peril. Let me ask this question: When you bought your last car, did you research it on the web, comparing features and price with similar models, maintenance records, or did you just go to the “same-old” dealer and buy another of the same thing? If the former, welcome to the 21st century; if the latter, ultimately, you led to the death of a large part of the American car industry, by rewarding them for products that compared poorly with the competition, leading them to assume they had a built-in customer base that would never abandon them. Oops! The RE industry is at the same crossroad; evolve or die. Give the customer, that is, the buyer who REALLY pays those commissions by buying a house, what they want. And what they want is quantities of reliable information wherever they can find it. Eventually, somebody will, and if it's not you, I think you know where that leads.

1. I find an agency web site in the area, look at the houses and realize that other properties that I know are available in the area are not listed on their site. Does the broker think that people looking at their web site are as computer illiterate as they apparently must be? This is a poor business model, and the brokerage will not get my business.

2. I visit a broker and hit it off; this is the person I want to work with. They give me their site URL and I look at some properties. I stop back in to talk to them, and they bring up the same property on their ID and passsword from the web, and son-of-a-gun if they don't have twice the listing information I saw on the web, price history, neighborhood, model of home, more pictures, etc. “If this was on the web,” they say, “you wouldn't need me.” On the contrary. I need an agent to get me into the place to look at it; I'll need their legal advice, procedural advice, contracting advice, etc. Ignoring for the moment that in the final analysis agents and brokers work for the seller, their job is to connect me with a house that I will spend my hard-earned money to buy. Whenever information is withheld – for any reason – the consumer has to wonder: “What else am I not able to find out about this?”

3. I go into my agent's office. They log onto their web site and begin showing me listings. After 20 or so, my eyes begin to glaze over, having seen nothing of any interest. Did they ask me what I wanted first? Of course, but without a photographic memory of the details of every listing, the agent is wandering around the listings somewhat aimlessly. Search parameters? Sure, but how do I know if a particular house in a particular neighborhood is over-priced, or one that the agent has personally listed? Not enough information. After three hours, nothing meaningful has been accomplished – unless you consider that in this RE market the agent probably would have bored stiff with otherwise nothing to do. Here's an idea, give me a quick tour of how to use the tools, turn the keyboard over to me, then leave the room so I can do my own searching in the fastest time. When I find something I'm interested in, I'll step into your office and tell you that something interesting has come up, and we can proceed. I'm sorry to have to say this, but most 10-year olds have more computer savy than your average real estate agent; so too do an awful lot of your customers.

Standardized formats? Screen-scrapers so I can download the information into a spreadsheet so I can do my own comparisons, or for that matter, how about a spreadsheet view of all of the listings that is already in Excel format so I can pull it down and look at it at? Too much information for the customer? Makes it too easy for “someone else” to aggregate the information and “work around” the agent?

Here's are a few things to consider thoughtfully and thoroughly:

1. You can list 100 properties a week, and, true, the seller pays the commission – theoretically – but if you never sell one of those properties you won't make five cents. How is limiting the exposure of the properties you hope to sell a good thing? Who cares where a customer finds it? Certainly not the customer.

2. For the most part, if you're under the age of 40, you've grown up on the web, you're used to finding information there in abundance, and you don't make any purchases, be they appliances, cars, TVs, computers, etc. without a thorough web search to compare features, availability and prices. Once you've decided what you want to buy you look for local availability and support and price in combination. You may change your selection based on those criteria, and you'll bargain for the best local price. Even Sears, for goodness sake, will “match anyone's advertised prices.” And brokers and agents want to limit the information they put on a web site? I'm likely to find the brokerage with the best information on the web, then work with an agent at that agency rather than screw around with an agent who publishes one set of info to the web but keeps the best stuff where I have to go into their office everytime I want more details. Who wouldn't? It's just a matter of time before I find that agency with the best and most easily digestible information and the ability to do meaningful comparisons; they'll then get my business.

3. A lot of things worked in 2004 that are now out of step with the current RE market. In the stock market they say that a bull market makes everyone feel like an investing genius. It's now a buyer's market, and I see price reductions every day on the listings I follow. Lots of listings are embarrassments; many prices are too high. If you're over “a certain age” you're desire to keep information private or less publicized is an impediment to your future success, though you don't see it that way. That “this is the information age” isn't just a slogan; it's a fact of life you ignore at your own peril. Let me ask this question: When you bought your last car, did you research it on the web, comparing features and price with similar models, maintenance records, or did you just go to the “same-old” dealer and buy another of the same thing? If the former, welcome to the 21st century; if the latter, ultimately, you led to the death of a large part of the American car industry, by rewarding them for products that compared poorly with the competition, leading them to assume they had a built-in customer base that would never abandon them. Oops! The RE industry is at the same crossroad; evolve or die. Give the customer, that is, the buyer who REALLY pays those commissions by buying a house, what they want. And what they want is quantities of reliable information wherever they can find it. Eventually, somebody will, and if it's not you, I think you know where that leads.

1. I find an agency web site in the area, look at the houses and realize that other properties that I know are available in the area are not listed on their site. Does the broker think that people looking at their web site are as computer illiterate as they apparently must be? This is a poor business model, and the brokerage will not get my business.

2. I visit a broker and hit it off; this is the person I want to work with. They give me their site URL and I look at some properties. I stop back in to talk to them, and they bring up the same property on their ID and passsword from the web, and son-of-a-gun if they don't have twice the listing information I saw on the web, price history, neighborhood, model of home, more pictures, etc. “If this was on the web,” they say, “you wouldn't need me.” On the contrary. I need an agent to get me into the place to look at it; I'll need their legal advice, procedural advice, contracting advice, etc. Ignoring for the moment that in the final analysis agents and brokers work for the seller, their job is to connect me with a house that I will spend my hard-earned money to buy. Whenever information is withheld – for any reason – the consumer has to wonder: “What else am I not able to find out about this?”

3. I go into my agent's office. They log onto their web site and begin showing me listings. After 20 or so, my eyes begin to glaze over, having seen nothing of any interest. Did they ask me what I wanted first? Of course, but without a photographic memory of the details of every listing, the agent is wandering around the listings somewhat aimlessly. Search parameters? Sure, but how do I know if a particular house in a particular neighborhood is over-priced, or one that the agent has personally listed? Not enough information. After three hours, nothing meaningful has been accomplished – unless you consider that in this RE market the agent probably would have bored stiff with otherwise nothing to do. Here's an idea, give me a quick tour of how to use the tools, turn the keyboard over to me, then leave the room so I can do my own searching in the fastest time. When I find something I'm interested in, I'll step into your office and tell you that something interesting has come up, and we can proceed. I'm sorry to have to say this, but most 10-year olds have more computer savy than your average real estate agent; so too do an awful lot of your customers.

Standardized formats? Screen-scrapers so I can download the information into a spreadsheet so I can do my own comparisons, or for that matter, how about a spreadsheet view of all of the listings that is already in Excel format so I can pull it down and look at it at? Too much information for the customer? Makes it too easy for “someone else” to aggregate the information and “work around” the agent?

Here's are a few things to consider thoughtfully and thoroughly:

1. You can list 100 properties a week, and, true, the seller pays the commission – theoretically – but if you never sell one of those properties you won't make five cents. How is limiting the exposure of the properties you hope to sell a good thing? Who cares where a customer finds it? Certainly not the customer.

2. For the most part, if you're under the age of 40, you've grown up on the web, you're used to finding information there in abundance, and you don't make any purchases, be they appliances, cars, TVs, computers, etc. without a thorough web search to compare features, availability and prices. Once you've decided what you want to buy you look for local availability and support and price in combination. You may change your selection based on those criteria, and you'll bargain for the best local price. Even Sears, for goodness sake, will “match anyone's advertised prices.” And brokers and agents want to limit the information they put on a web site? I'm likely to find the brokerage with the best information on the web, then work with an agent at that agency rather than screw around with an agent who publishes one set of info to the web but keeps the best stuff where I have to go into their office everytime I want more details. Who wouldn't? It's just a matter of time before I find that agency with the best and most easily digestible information and the ability to do meaningful comparisons; they'll then get my business.

3. A lot of things worked in 2004 that are now out of step with the current RE market. In the stock market they say that a bull market makes everyone feel like an investing genius. It's now a buyer's market, and I see price reductions every day on the listings I follow. Lots of listings are embarrassments; many prices are too high. If you're over “a certain age” you're desire to keep information private or less publicized is an impediment to your future success, though you don't see it that way. That “this is the information age” isn't just a slogan; it's a fact of life you ignore at your own peril. Let me ask this question: When you bought your last car, did you research it on the web, comparing features and price with similar models, maintenance records, or did you just go to the “same-old” dealer and buy another of the same thing? If the former, welcome to the 21st century; if the latter, ultimately, you led to the death of a large part of the American car industry, by rewarding them for products that compared poorly with the competition, leading them to assume they had a built-in customer base that would never abandon them. Oops! The RE industry is at the same crossroad; evolve or die. Give the customer, that is, the buyer who REALLY pays those commissions by buying a house, what they want. And what they want is quantities of reliable information wherever they can find it. Eventually, somebody will, and if it's not you, I think you know where that leads.

1) The current, dominant model for business in North America (may be true elsewhere, but I can’t say that with any degree of certainty) is to wring every last drop of profit from your current business model before adopting a new one. Energy companies are doing it, media companies are doing it, airlines are doing it, etc. This is no longer a successful strategy. Look at the music industry. Had they tossed aside their old model of distribution, they would be laughing now and not buried in un-winnable (or at least un-enforceable) court battles or dying slow deaths. iTunes and SouthWest (or WestJet in Canada) are great examples of companies that saw the demand for a new business model. Protecting your data as a way to connect with your clients WILL NOT WORK. “Protecting” your business from the internet has not worked for anyone. You need to embrace the technology and make it work for you.

2) Customers don’t want to replace agents (at least not yet . As others have said, agents are an important link in the chain. Available MLS data provides us with the answers to the first 10 questions we would ask any agent: location, square-footage, beds/baths, heating/cooling/water, build year, amenities, SALES HISTORY, etc. I’m not the guy to make that list. As a consumer, when I want to buy a car, I want to make sure it is at least the right KIND of car before I talk to the sales person. Yes, that sales person can help me find exactly the right car, but I need to be in control of when that contact happens.

3) Free data. Something that many people forget is that just because you HAVE the data doesn’t mean that you OWN the data. The data is free, just walk around your neighbourhood. Instead of having agents enter the listing, just have a simple site where sellers enter their info. Boom. Your whole system goes down. There are a million ways for people to get around your system, any system. You’re living on the time borrowed before people figure out those ways.

4) Look at ComFree in Canada. Yes, there are problems, but for people currently in the real estate industry, this is a bit scary. What happens if this catches on? What happens if they start to PAY sellers (all sellers, even those with agents) to provide their house data to the site? What happens if they hire a decent designer and improve their property search?

The fact that real estate is a big ticket, complex item has made the industry forget (or ignore) lessons from other industries (the car industry, to a lesser extent, has done this too). Continue to do so at your peril. Always remember that there are people with money and ideas who do not share your view of the world and would be very happy to steal your market share.

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