Derek Eisenberg

Fred, I generally agree with you in terms of letting the whole world see my listings to further a sale. I agree with your points on dual agency too. However, Abbott seemed to indicate that he would continue feeding to IDX where other brokers could show his listings. His objection seemed to be feeding to non-broker sites that sell leads back to the very brokers who patronize them with the data. I will continue to syndicate to everyone but I do see his point. I would ask you to think of another business where the distributor gives the product away free only to buy it back for a fee. I have posted many times on Inman that Realtors should repurchase all the stock in Realtor.com. It would cost $300 per Realtor after which I would not have to pay them the $12K± I pay them annually. As for Zillow and Trulia, how bout revenue sharing. If a musician records a hit and a bar plays that song, they pay the recording artist. Zillow and Trulia profit on published material we realtors procure and type in to an MLS. The original MSN model in 1988 paid our MLS $1 per listing. Derek Eisenberg http://www.mls2u.com

Every time a piece like this is published, I feel the need to say this again. Realtor.com's market cap is about $300 million. There are 1± million Realtors. That is $300 per REALTOR® to buy back the most visited (occasionally it is # 2 but usually 1) site out there. Revamp it to give REALTOR® members all the enhanced features that they pay a fortune for now and beyond that, short of IDX, we would not need to syndicate to any other sites. The disaster started started in the late 90s with RIN. Remember that...The Real Estate Information Network. After the NAR wasted 13 million of our money, they were scared to try again and licensed Realtor.com to Homestore now Move, as a publicly traded company. It's all history now but it's time to right the wrong. REALTORS® need to buy it back. Derek Eisenberg http://www.mls2u.com

I have no issue with these sites because it's free exposure and the typical listing agent in the US only sells their own listing 1% of the time or less. So statistically it is not selling by the listing agent and while the listing office might be slightly higher, I want the exposure. I think all exposure contributes a little bit. Realtor.com is my peeve. I have said many times on this forum and others that NAR should repurchase all the shares of Realtor.com. It has a $300± million market cap that would cost each Realtor $300 one time to buy back. There are about a million Realtors. They could spread the cost over 3 years. We would then own the forum and it could charge Realtors a small fee for gingerbreaded displays. Keep in mind that Zillow and Trulia offer multiple photos for free. Realtor.com charges for more than 4. Derek Eisenberg http://www.mls2u.com