Holy grail of real estate marketing is a cup half empty

Cross-sell, up-sell, affinity partnership, capture rates and synergy are all terms to describe the holy grail of marketing. The thinking: I have one set of customers who buy cars from me, why can't I just sell them a house while I am at it? That was what General Motors had it mind when it bought the Better Homes & Garden real estate franchise. When you buy a house from Century 21, then it would seem to follow that you will take out a mortgage from Cendant Mortgage, right? Or when you buy a travel ticket to London on Expedia, maybe you will use LendingTree to find a lender for your home loan. The Holy Grail is generally considered to be the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper and the one used by Joseph of Arimathea to catch his blood as he hung on the cross. But no one has ever found the real Holy Grail and no one has found the holy grail of marketing: cross selling customers from one industry to the next. Certainly, no one has found that in real estate. This week, Bar...