Let me start by saying that for the longest time, I was TOTALLY against “forced registration” (requiring visitors to provide their contact information before viewing the MLS). I not only did not force registration on our brokerage website, but I also wrote about why others should not do it either. In short, I was firmly planted in the “that’s a bad thing to do” camp.

Over time, I softened my position somewhat, when people would tell me that they were having success with it. I still would never do it, but I could not argue with their success.

First, Morgan Carey at RealEstateWebmasters.com told me that I needed to at least try it. Great. Nope. I still would not budge. In my heart, I thought that asking folks for their information

a) was unfriendly

b) it would drive traffic to competitor sites

c) would lower the quality of the lead

d) would result in more obscene emails from unhappy visitors

e) and any increase in # of registrations would be offset with an overall net loss in closings…well, you get the idea (grin).

As more and more people started reporting to me their successes (an example was Wayne Long, who was kind enough to share exactly what was happening on his site with me), I finally decided to TRY it. The folks that I visited with at the REW conference were helpful as well. Almost all of them had already made the transition.

How did it go?

Here are the results: Continue reading this post

We have had a lot of positive changes to our MLS system recently.

We use MRIS (Metropolitan Regional Information System). There have been quite a few additions to our drop down menus. You can now choose short sales and foreclosures in a home search. We have had quite an interest from home buyers that feel they are getting a great value with these type of sales.

MRIS has also added features such as a highlighted banner in the remarks section. Here we can boast the best features of the home, and it will catch the attention of other agents. We also have the capability to relist a home after it has been off the market for at least 90 days and the total days on market starts over at zero.

In the past we had to wait 6 months for a property to be relisted to start with zero days on market. This benefits the seller tremendously if they want to take a few months off and then relist their property. We have a fairly new feature of virtual earth map which gives you the option of a birds eye view or aerial view of the property. Continue reading this post

I’ll tell you why our MLS is competitive in one word: VOLUME.

Yesterday I checked the community of Euclid Ohio. There were 683 homes on the market. Rocky River has 240 homes for sale. Lakewood has 376; Cleveland Heights has 666. You get the point. There are a lot of available homes in NE Ohio.

If you are selling your home you will be asking the same question your Realtor® is asking—what can I do to make my listing stand out, and not be the house in the back of the room waving it’s chimney saying ‘pick me, pick me!’

I decided to use myself as an example. I have quite a few buyers at the moment and spend time culling the listings to set up showings.

Here is what I automatically eliminate:

1. Homes with no photos

(In fact, even if they have the primary/exterior photo, unless it’s unique, I skip it unless there are more.)

2. Homes with no room sizes and amenities listed

So it has four bedrooms. What are the sizes? Do they have wood floors, ceiling fans, carpet? If you don’t list it, I say NEXT because there will be, say, 100 others that DO list it.

3. Descriptions

Many Realtors® and brokers give descriptions on REOs and short sale properties, no matter what the listing price. That is as it should be. And in this day and age, if you don’t do that, then I can say…NEXT.

I think you get the idea!

Since almost all of my clients and close to what, 90% of all prospective home buyers are Continue reading this post

Written by Tal Ariel who was previously HomeGain’s AIMS (Advanced Internet Marketing Solution) Product Manager.

Many of the agents subscribing to the AIMS program have enjoyed success, some closing as many as five contracts in their first six months.

Some of those who were less successful initially and decided to cancel actually came back after enough time was given for their leads to pan out.

As with any product or idea, there are bound to be obstacles and problems, both for the customer and the provider.

Interestingly, the biggest obstacles thus far with our AIMS product have nothing to do with features, functionality, guarantee fulfillment or customer service.

Rather it has been the MLS boards’ rules and regulations around IDX that often prevent an interested and willing agent from signing up.

Usually this is due to several possible issues:

• Brokers-only boards – there are the MLS boards that do not allow their agent members to get their own IDX feed from a 3rd party IDX provider. Instead they Continue reading this post

“Real estate compensation structures are wrought with problems, which could be effectively eliminated if the MLS-mandated offer of compensation were done away with.

Agent compensation is set by office policies that support a specific company’s fee philosophy and income. But the system doesn’t take into account how it affects consumers’ opinion of value received or how it can clash with other companies’ compensation policies.

These policies also contribute to uneducated agents blacklisting certain properties—either intentionally or unintentionally.

One major contributing factor to the compensation problem is that a buyer’s agent is paid according to the selling agent’s office policy. This totally disregards the buy-side agent’s office policy on compensation, the buyer’s contract with his agent and the seller’s best interests, which are to remove any barriers that may keep potential buyers from seeing their home.

One problematic result of the mandatory unilateral offer of compensation is the belief that the seller and his agent are the ones paying for the buyer agent’s fee. In reality, both the seller and buyer agents’ fees come from the negotiated sale price, and are deducted from the proceeds Continue reading this post