Remember what you learned as a kid? Maybe it will help you with today’s big questions about the future of our industry and the kind of marketplace we want to maintain for our clients.
Here’s a question you might want to ask.
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Mirror, Mirror
As I consider the issue of private listing networks, here's a question to ask --- not to other agents, but with sellers:
"Mr and Mrs Seller, when it comes to deciding to market your home privately or publicly, have you considered the Golden Rule?
When we successfully sell your home, something wonderful is going to happen! You're going to STOP being a SELLER and instantly become a BUYER!
So, when you BECOME A BUYER, do YOU want to see ALL of the homes immediately available to you in the marketplace, or just SOME of them?"
Then, let your sellers answer the question.
Those Who Forget the Past…
In my opinion, private listing networks are a solution in search of a problem. For starters, we had private listing networks for years - decades before we had MLS, we had private listings, as brokers essentially wouldn’t - or, couldn’t - promote their listings to other brokers cost-effectively before office technology and the internet. For fun, go look up what the initials in ERA Real Estate (born 1971) stand for (Hint: they put a fax machine in every office to make it easy to share listings).
When I started in 1991, the practice of faxing a listing to every office was the only affordable way to quickly share inventory. And trust me, those listings look beautiful on that old thermal fax paper! By the late 1990s, every office had a basic terminal (some of you young’uns might have to look up that, too), and we all learned strange computer syntax in order to enter our data on a screen with a blinking cursor. Reports were on dot-matrix printers. And there were no photos, maps, video,s or other goodies included.
Back then, the industry walked up-hill, both ways, in the snow, to get to an open house.
MLS was more than just marketing technology
It’s a set of agreements - entered into willingly by MLS participants (brokers). It included rules about how to behave in a private marketplace for promoting listings between brokers. It’s only in the last 20 years that MLS has also become a means for publishing that data online to consumers. Since that happened, consumers have been thrilled to search the market - as much of it as possible - with the belief that they were seeing everything available to them.
Real estate online became a national pastime.
And companies (and entire countries) around the world are envious of our system. Just try to find all the inventory for sale in Italy or China or Brazil. There isn’t a system for the practitioners, let alone the public. It’s all private - and it’s all totally frustrating to brokers, buyers, and sellers alike.
But, but, but…
Yes, yes, yes…there are always exceptions. What if a broker represents a seller who wants to keep their property information private? Fine.
The Golden Rule can handle those exceptions, because it already does, and they’re few and far between. There's already an "exception form" in every MLS, for those moments when you represent an A-list celebrity, a Federal Judge, a CIA spy, or the King of Wakanda.
For all the other ordinary days of your career, there's the Golden Rule, designed for the majority of consumers who benefit from an open, transparent, and fair marketplace.
Because most SELLERS also become BUYERS
So, how will your Sellers feel when the shoe is on the other foot?
That’s the danger to sellers from private networks.
How do YOU feel when you don't have all the information in an important transaction? When data is ASYMMETRIC in favor of the other party, such as purchasing a car, insurance, or technology, when the other party has more information than you do. How do you feel when you weren't given a fair chance in the market?
That's why I remember that the most troublesome answers are discovered by the easiest of questions:
What would I like to have happen TO ME?
The Golden Rule is Golden for a Reason
Something tells me that if we asked this question of sellers, we'd get an answer that's simpler, cleaner, and nicer than all the industry hufflepuffery happening right now. Everyone seems to know what they want THE OTHER PARTY to do -- but the better decision might be to ask what we'd like to have HAPPEN TO US.
This isn’t a question of business models.
Or even one of technology.
This is a question of ethics.
And the answer isn’t as complicated as we think.
Just ask your sellers, who are about to become buyers. I think they’ll agree:
The Golden Rule still rules.
— M
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