Duke Lane

• Manage |RSSReal Estate Marketing
• Manage |RSSReal Estate Marketing 2.0
• Manage |RSSReal Estate Trends
• Manage |RSSTechnology, Tools and Tidbits

I just did a quick analytics search on "TheSarasotaMLS.com," "SarasotaMLS.com," and "SarasotaRealtors.com," with some interesting results. See Compete's comparison here. Marc's site outperforms both of the others combined over the last year in terms of unique visitors per month, with that trend only reversing starting in about May and the latter two getting more hits only starting in September. The same pretty much holds true in terms of visitors' stay length on the sites. More interestingly, Compete tracks keyword usage: Marc's site has a total of 18 keywords that land people most commonly onto his site, while "SarasotaMLS.com" has no such data available, and "SarasotaRealtors.com" only has 13. My Compete account only lets me see the top five keywords, and for Marc's site, those are: * Sarasota real estate for sale (15.85% of searches) * sarasota real estate (14.38%) * sarasota MLS listings (11.17%) * siesta key village (6.97%) * la fierenza longboat key (6.78%) While for "SarasotaRealtors.com," the top keyword searches are: * sarasota MLS (35.30%) * sarasota association of realtors (19.46%) * denver seo (8.71%) (!!!!) * sarasota florida association of realtors (5.97%) * www.sar.mlxchange.com (5.06%) "Sarasota MLS" does not even account for 6.5% of Marc's site traffic (which is currently down 90% while "sarasotaMLS.com" is up 884%!), so I'm not quite certain what the real complaint is here. (Interestingly, a WHOIS name search returned the following as administrative/technical contact for "TheSarasotaMLS.com": Sarasota Association of Realtors technology @ sarasotarealtors.com 3590 S. Tuttle Avenue Sarasota, FL 34239 This record was apparently created in 2005 rather than 2003; is this really Marc's site, said to have been established in 2003? Does this mean that the issue has been settled somehow?) Personally, I find it amazing that an MLS can assert any form of trademark infringement when there is no trademark. It would seem that, in order to assert any sort of "perceived" infringement, it would be necessary for the claimant to assert it not just against selected targets (i.e., Realtors) without asserting it universally. Its failure to do so would suggest that it really had no perception of a claim to the name if it only pursued action against entities over which it might claim some sort of other jurisdiction, that is, as members. Depending upon whether the MLS is association owned or independent, it seems even more strange that it could or would move against its very shareholders, who provide its entire raison d'etre and actually own it ... at least not without obtaining a mandate from its shareholder-membership to do so. Has anyone considered trying to get Major League Soccer to move against the multiple listing services for infringement of ITS trademark name? (grin) I find it astounding that the case would even be considered by a court after the complainant's own authorized and recognized internal ethics committee found no infraction: is the association not bound by its own committees' decisions? Why, then, does it have them if it intends to reverse their decisions whenever the management doesn't agree with them? Is there nothing in the by-laws that addresses that? To what extent does NAR support this action other than in print? Are they consulting in any way with the MLS (its member) against Marc (its member), providing policy or other assistance, financial support, or anything of that nature? If so, should NAR not be enjoined against holding such a position? Is it within its purview to do so? It will be interesting to see how this case shakes out, and what, if anything, the Realtor members of NAR will do in reaction to it with respect to NAR's apparent "police" tactics, or whether they'll complain about it and do absolutely nothing more. It frankly amazes me that the issue should have ever come to this, and will amaze me even more if the MLSes prevail in such actions.

This is not a lot different than the NAR Annual Technology Survey, which targets both brokers and agents. Not only is it a hugely disappointing response rate, but the data gleaned from it is wholly unrealistic. Most of the respondants, for example, state that they are parties to less than two transactions per month, and spend under $500 for their website services. Clearly, these are people who are NOT on the forefront of either technology OR the real estate sales profession, yet this is the data that NAR promotes as being "the state of the market." The people who answer these surveys seem to be those who've GOT TIME to answer surveys. Are they really representative of anything? Why do these organizations continue to tout such appalling statistics except that they can excerpt some pretty high percentages?

I'm frankly at a loss to understand exactly why an agent (who is typically licensed to sell real estate in only one state) needs to have access to "raw" listing data in other states, and especially in states clear across the country. If a California agent wants to know what's for sale in Connecticut, can't s/he simply look it up on Realtor.com and then contact a cooperating agent - the listing agent, perhaps, or at least someone from the listing brokerage, or even a colleague from, say, the CRS Council? After all, how am I - licensed and living in Texas - going to advise someone about a home for sale somewhere in New England? And exactly when am I going to schedule showings with them? I'm certainly of the opinion that I should have access to all of the listings I can sell. The idea of having over 900 MLSes in just 50 states - and multiple MLSes in postage stamp-sized states in New England - is as ridiculous as one big national MLS. On the other hand, one MLS per state - one repository for all the properties that I'm licensed to sell - makes perfect sense. (Even one for all of New England, which combined is less that 1/4 of Texas!) In that case, there is an economy of scale such that the budgetary issues - the ability to afford new technologies, etc. - brought to the fore by Rob's article are effectively solved. At the same time, it serves all of those who are licensed to sell the listings it has. (Those from other states can continue to do as they do now: refer the business to someone who knows the market. Real estate is, after all, "local," isn't it?) The idea that any MLS can charge $50K for an IDX data feed - to its own constituents?!? - gives rise to the question of how much the SOLE data source can charge (as Danilo raised the question: only the largest brokerages could afford it, and the rest necessarily go by the wayside). One has to wonder if anti-trust laws would even allow such an animal.