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Tim, it's great to read your fine articulation of the realities of the New Real Estate Economy. Good to know you are out there, hammering. Nice work! Donald Teel www.ePartnerUSA.com www.REALonomics.net

We have entered a "New Real Estate Economy" as Sherry hints and we have yet to see what we can create and accomplish in this consumer-centric era. See www.epartnerusa.com/presentations/broker/p4/index.html. However, we are just now entering this new economic wave/era for the real estate industry and its full definition has yet to emerge so that we can utilize it to enhance consumer relationships, confidence in our industry and restore profitability. This new era in the real estate industry's development will be governed by what we have been calling since 2001, "The Ten Commandments of the New Real Estate Economy." See www.ePartnerUSA.com/docs/tencommandments.pdf. Each era, or Economic Wave, within the industry is always defined by the central technologies used by Broker/Owners and agents in the execution of our business models. See www.REALonomics.net/presentations/understanding-real-estate-eras. Each past era is eclipsed by the preceding era as the consumer becomes more and more empowered by information. Interestingly, with each era in the development of the real estate industry, Broker/Owner profits diminish with their loss of control and the open dissemination of property information to agents and consumers. Sherry is correct about the transformation of our operating models. It's a message that is resonating with Broker/Owners whose margins in the aftermath of the housing crash are nearly non-existent due to the out-dated and pathetically inept retail brokerage models of the Broker-Centric Era. Some of us just don't know what to do without a building and Owners are still not equipped by the industry with streamlined, cost-effective and standardized operating systems that can help us with the task of cyber deployment, although the tools are sitting on the shelf. We are still so hung up on websites, forms and who controls the MLS that we have immobilized ourselves to a large degree with too much self-pity and ego reflection. We are just now starting to actually "get it" and the challenge for us going forward is to resist the temptation to create another real estate "model fad" where Brokerage firms are adopting lingo and pseudo business models that still don't produce sufficient ROI. At www.REALonomics.net and www.ePartnerUSA.com we have been calling the industry to assess itself from top to bottom and create the real changes necessary starting with NAR and moving down and out to the consumer, whose trust and affinity for our industry is akin to low Presidential approval ratings. We will continue to repeat the message like a drumbeat...any "Roadmap to Recovery" cannot just be uni-dimensional and self-serving but multi-faceted and comprehensive. We may only have one shot at this "reinvention" thing and the margin of error is razor thin. Our fear is that we will define "recovery" as just writing more contracts than we wrote last year and we will ignore the huge opportunities we have to truly restructure the industry into a transparent, consumer-centric model. We compliment Sherry Chris! www.ePartnerUSA.com www.REALonomics.net

Actually, the retail store brokerage model has been tried a number of times and ways, each time it failed. Coldwell Banker tried it in Sears outlets as did their mortgage wing. Home Depot has tried it. The notion of the consumer going anywhere to find property information is antithetical to what we have called "The New Real Estate Economy" (see www.epartnerusa.com/presentation.htm). The era of the "Four B's" (Brokers, Boards, Books and Buildings) is decidedly over and is being replaced by a new era where the consumer controls the profitability joy-stick in a cyber game for market control. See http://realonomics.net/2008/05/realonopoly-does-anyone-still-wanna-play-this-old-game/ However, having said all of this, the lead gen game that was being played out is now an invalidated model because Internet leads are the worst leads ever generated by the industry. Marc is right with respect to creating relationships with consumers so that we can create leads with true revenue potential..."not the half-baked online leads..." as he put it. www.ePartnerUSA.com www.REALonomics.net