Friday, May 30, 2008

NAR & DOJ Are Now BFFs

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have finally reached a settlement over the display of Multiple Listing Service (MLS) listings on Virtual Office Websites (VOWs). Whew! That's a lot of acronyms for saying that online only brokerages that don't exist in the brick and mortar world can put MLS listings on their sites.

A lot of people are saying this is the end of real estate as we know it and things are going to seriously start changing in the real estate marketplace.

Um, except that during the 3 years it took NAR and the DOJ to reach this settlement, a lot has already seriously changed in the real estate market, especially when it comes to transparency and online information. From The Real Estate Bloggers:

The opening of the MLS systems to online and virtual real estate companies has long been over. The bigger battle will be the viability of maintaining an expensive MLS in the age of Trulias and Zillows.

Think about it, the lawsuit was to force the brokerages to allow online real estate agents to post their homes. Now we have the major real estate firms signing deals with Zillow to post their listings directly bypassing these online agents.

So essentially the National Association of Realtors has spent their dues not on developing better systems to grow the business of their members, but to fight for the right to have the monopoly on buggy whips.


Ouch.

Hey, NAR? Can I have my last three years worth of dues back now? I have a $60 tank of gas to buy to drive clients around who found a bunch of homes to look at on Trulia last night. Thanks.

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