"The smart money is embracing it [anonymous agent reviews] and realizing that having a collection of online reviews may give them a competitive advantage in the marketplace."

Is this hilarious or what?

Generally speaking, statements such as these should be backed up with some sort of factual information.

What is "the smart money"? Who is embracing it? Do these companies have names? What are the names?

Notice he say "may" give them a competitive advantage. Doesn't sound very sure of himself does he?

Marketplace? Do you really want your customers going to a site to find another realtor?

Why would we ever send our customers anywhere other that our personal or company websites?

We as Realtors need to control the information provided to our clients so they are fully represented. Otherwise we will be replaced by a website with a “Blank Offer” form for Buyers to fill out themselves. Oh wait that is already happening.

We as realtors should not need to justify a response to every "anonymous" person that may leave a "fraudulent" review of our services without a simple or easy way to have this "false information" removed from the view of the masses.

Lawyers don’t allow anonymous reviews by their patients and neither do Doctors.

So let’s ask this question again, “who” is embracing it? It seems that those that are embracing it are those that wish to cheapen our profession and turn us Realtors into low priced showing agent that make a low yearly salary like the agents at Redfin.

As stated by the “anonymous” man from agentscoreboard.com

” ” Most real estate transactions are pretty simple, most of the "top producers" I know have transaction managers that handle the deals once they are in escrow. I think you can boil 90% of real estate transactions down to a simple formula and it can be worked much more efficiently and cost effectively.”

Yah, they really care about us real estate agents. To them we are all the same, just paper pushers with no experience, knowledge, or marketing skills. Or at least we will be when the commissions are slashed by 90% and the “smart agents” have left the field.

Personally, I feel that these "online reviews" are just another way to sell ad space and possibly the leads back to us realtors. But hey, if you are dumb enough to "feed the monster" don't be surprised when it grows up to devour the realtors as we are forced to pay for every lead because the customers have become accustomed to going to national websites rather than local realtor websites.

Sincerely,

Greg M. Ingerson
Attorney At Law
Real Estate Broker

LA Home Search
http://www.LAHomeSearch.com

P.S. I am posting this here because I know that they won't post my comments on their site.

Looks like the Redfin site wasn't so good after all. If it was, they wouldn't keep changing it so often. Would they? So much for your idea that it was so user friendly.

Brian,
You must be in on all that venture capital cash … or maybe your one of the idiots that actually thinks Redfin can make money in the discount real estate market.

Let me explain why you are wrong:
Let’s pretend that redfin actually does start to take a market share (if it doesn’t the investors will never see a penny), don’t you think that other brokers will be forced to drop the prices to compete? Of course they will, then redfin won’t seem so attractive will it?

Next, let’s look at the agents. There is no way that the agents at redfin are as good as the top agents at any office. How do I know this you ask? Simple, why on earth would any agent that is able to make more than the redfin agent ever want to work for a salary or hourly wage if they were able to make more by working for commission?

In other words, commission is a salespersons version of survival of the fittest, and those that can’t sell enough to feed themselves get out of the business (as it should be).

At redfin, it comes down to who is willing to work for a minimal wage compared to want they could make if they were able to find business on their own.

Unfortunately, all that redfin is going to accomplish in the short run is a huge outlay of venture capital as is spends and spends to promote itself, followed by the realization that if the business model was any good it would have been able to generate enough money on its.

Now let’s talk about the website.
You obviously don’t know anything about SEO (search engine optimization). If you did, you would realize why the other agent websites have text.

NEWS FLASH, the other agents sites have to generate cash, they all don’t have 12 million plus in venture capital for advertising.

Yes that’s right, the other agents are attempting to use SEO to rank for selected key words such as “their area real estate,” and unlike redfin, these agents have to make a living by selling real estate rather than through endless rounds of venture capital spending (does anyone remember Napster?).

The crazy thing is, no one has ever bothered to explain how redfin will ever operate at a profit given the high cost of PPC (pay per click) that redfin uses to attract customers.

The rebate
Redfin believes that they will attract customers by giving most of the commission back in the form of the rebate.

This isn’t a new concept, it is what inexperienced agents have done for years to attract customers because they weren’t skilled or experienced enough to charge a full commission.

But why shouldn’t refin give it back, they hardly earned it as they don’t show their buyers houses unless you pay for each house you see. Than their agents that weren’t able to make it in the real estate industry (I doubt any of them has ever made 6 figures) will negotiate for you (like they care, most of them probably won’t be in real estate long enough for redfin to go bankrupt). BEST OF LUCK if you use redfin.

Most real estate transactions are pretty simple, most of the "top producers" i know have transaction managers that handle the deals once they are in escrow. I think you can boil 90% of real estate transactions down to a simple formula and it can be worked much more efficently and cost effectively.

You've obviously picked up some good ideas from them. Love your blog!

Brian

Wow did Greg miss the entire article… Glad he doesn't work in missile defense.

Redfin actually stays away from PPC, their budget for it is $0, except in new markets. In fact the Redfin website is quite SEO friendly; its home page may not show that since its CTO Michael Young doesn't care about the home page, he wants content pages to be optimized not like Greg's cluttered homepage. Mr. Young is quite smart about SEO actually, probably the only person that knows more about it in the RE space than him would be Vanessa Fox over at Zillow.

Anyway, Brian's post is right on. The Romans were successful for almost 1000 years because they adopted the technology and warriors of the nations they conquered. They knew that sometimes even a sure loser can come up with earth shaking innovation.

There's definitely room for a real estate company that delivers full service with the sensibilities and execution you see with Redfin.

I have not seen it. Yet.

Brian Boero

I am not denigrating their business model because there is nothing wrong with the discount model for a real estate brokerage (except that it is not very profitable.) I just believe that they could be a real force to be reckoned with if they had instead positioned themselves as a innovative, customer-focused, cutting-edge brokerage rather than as a "internet discount brokerage with a great website."

Actually, it is not too late for them to stop focusing on what they will not do for customers and instead focus on all of things that they can do well.

Brian Wilson, zolve.com