James Dwiggins

This article should be re-titled to "NAR's Recipe For Making Realtors Irrelevant" Here are the ingredients needed... 1.) Put a committee together of people who obviously have no idea where the industry is headed or who our future competitors are going to be. Then have them answer to a majority of people who have their head in the sand and are still fighting over what data should be displayed online and who gets it. Then, let them make decisions that affect everyone else. 2.) Instead of making it easier for real estate companies/brokers/agents to build a better presence online that the consumer wants and needs... let's make it as difficult as possible and do everything we can to make our industry even more irrelevant online than we already are. 3.) Lets continue to make Zillow, Trulia, Yahoo, (non-real estate companies) the destination where consumers go for real estate because they have most of the listings nationally already since real estate companies and agents can’t on their websites. Now at this rate, we never will either! I'm wondering if anyone at NAR has looked at the latest Hitwise report on real estate sites. If they did, they would notice that NO real estate company is in the top 10 websites used by consumers anymore. This committee should be more focused on how to make real estate companies and agents (of all sizes) more relevant online... not making them less relevant, but I guess that would be logical. The Realtor value proposition is our knowledge… not the data… It’s always been this way! Unreal! James Dwiggins Vice President Realty World Northern California & Nevada.

I'm a huge fan of analytics and like where Woopra has gone with the system, but to be completely honest with you, the idea of being on a website as a buyer or seller and having a chat window open up in front of me with the agent asking if I would like help is the worst idea ever. I cant think of something that will drive more traffic away from a website than that. The internet is designed to be a non-intrusive place for people to research and use products and services on their terms. If someone showed up on my screen without me starting the conversation, not only would I click away, but I would never come back to the site, knowing that the user is looking at everything I'm doing. This feature is the last thing real estate agents should be taught to use, as it will be completely counter-productive to what they are trying to achieve online. As an agent, if you want to chat with people on your website provide a chat feature for your users, but let them decide when they want to chat with you. Unless I'm missing something, this feature should be removed from the software.

Jay – I agree with everything your saying! Deede, I appreciate your response; so let me dive a little deeper into my perspective. First, I whole-heartedly agree that banks are the problem too. Everybody involved has something to do with this mess. However, my main point to everything I have stated above is that I’m tired of everyone giving homeowners the sympathy card for their bad choices as well. I live in California, so I understand the problems quite well. My company handles thousands of foreclosure sales a year, so I have a pretty deep knowledge on this. With that said, don't get me wrong; in many cases these foreclosures are a sad situation, where good people with good intentions got caught in the mess. Look, everyone knows real estate is cyclical. It goes up and down like any investment. Your client was happy to pay for the home when it was worth $210,000. But, it dropped by over 50% in value, and now he's not ok with paying for it anymore because he has lost so much money, and had to take a pay cut. However, he made an agreement with the bank and was happy to do it when it was in his favor. Now he wants the bank to renegotiate. Well, look at it this way, what if your client made $110,000 on the home instead of losing it? Would he be ok if the bank came back to him and said that since the home gained value they want to raise his payments? No, he wouldn’t be ok with that. A contract is an agreement between two parties. There are risks and possible gains. Now granted, he had a big pay-cut, but its apparent he also over-extended himself when purchasing the home. I use the analogy of buying stocks. It’s a risk! You put money in, hoping it makes a return for you. If it doesn't, you lose the money and that's it. You took the risk, and it didn't pay off. Nobody bails you out; the company you invested into doesn’t give you the money back, and you have to accept responsibility for your choices. He made choices, took risks, and now has to deal with them. Same as I made choices to buy some houses, took risks in doing it, and will have to accept the consequences whether good or bad. Nobody knows the future, which is why it’s called a risk. Risks are how we learn and don’t end up making the same mistakes again.