rebels in REBNY may repel web listing portal
who at REBNY wants this thing, and why?
I blogged about the Nov 1 announcement by the Real Estate Board of New York about plans in the Spring to establish an internet portal for REBNY-member firm listings (A Giant Step for REBNY, but how big a step for humankind). At the time, I wondered (1) why they were making the announcement so far in advance (what was the urgency of announcing?), (2) who it was designed to ‘get’, and (3) whether the announcement had anything to do with the federal investigations into potentially anti-competitive practices in Manhattan.
I took the announcement as a fait accompli, on the theory that they would not announce anything unless it was a done deal. Silly me.
power rumblings, smaller snipings
The first public rumblings of discord in REBNY-land were in The Sun, quoting the head of PruDE the day after the announcement as saying it was not a done deal:
Nobody has really agreed 100% to anything yet," Ms. Herman said. "There are some roadblocks that people haven’t agreed to at this point."
Since PruDE is one of the two largest residential brokerage firms in Manhattan, that was an eye-opener, leading to further questions about why REBNY made the announcements before all the ducks had fallen into place.
drawing eyeballs to small firm listings?
The Sun also quoted smart-guy Jonathan Miller, who opined that such a portal would help smaller firms that do not promote their own websites (which would be linked to this portal) as well as the mega-firms.
Mr. Miller said that a shared public database could erode some brand distinction between companies that spend a lot of money on promoting brands. Traditionally, New York‘s firms have been associated with certain neighborhoods, kinds of apartments, or income levels, and that is changing, he said.
"REBNY seems to be in a position now of blurring the distinctions among their members," Mr. Miller said.
The head of Warburg is a frequent source of Real Estate Industrial Complex establishment commentary; he did not disappoint the establishment’s ‘never mind’ set:
The president of Warburg Realty Partnership, Frederick Peters, said that new portal would not drastically affect the city’s real estate landscape. He said the major change came about a decade ago when firms first started sharing information about listings with each other. Previously, a broker with an exclusive apartment listing was reluctant to split commissions with another broker who found a buyer.
Then Curbed posted a memo supposedly sent last week from some of the smaller independent firms, REBNY Web Portal Mutiny Brewing? The claim of at least some smaller REBNY member firms is that the web portal will disproportionately benefit the larger firms.
From an exposure point of view, I disagree. If the web portal ever goes live with all member firms’ listings, the listings of firms such Ardor, Klara Madlin, Flatiron, and DG Neary will be as exposed as those of PruDE and Corcoran. So I agree with Miller. But the money….
… at what cost?
At the reported fee structure of $3,000 for small firms and $7,000 for large firms, the smaller firms are getting hosed.
Many of the small firms in REBNY have less than 5% of the agents and exclusive listings as Corcoran and PruDE. Yet they will be billed at 3/7 the rate of the Big Boys and Girls.
I think this is awkward for the small REBNY firms, but I don’t believe that REBNY is out to ‘get’ them (its own members!). Whose ox is to be gored??
My best guess is old media and new media.
attacking the Old Grey Lady?
Firms pay a fortune for NY Times advertising, in paper and on line. This whole open portal effort may disappear if the Times rates drop. Up to now, the Times has had no real competition, and the firms have had little leverage. But this announcement changes that calculus.
or feeble roadblocks aganst new media?
New media like Trulia, Easy Street, Google Base are definitely a threat to firms’ control of listing data, but I don’t think REBNY can compete with the New Guys on their turf. They are *way* too focused and *way* more advanced about internet marketing than REBNY will ever be (witness Fred Peters remarks in the Sun). So if REBNY hopes to hold off the new media by putting up its own web portal … they lose (sooner or later).
The feds? Maybe this is a small step taken to show federal regulators that REBNY firms are acting with the best interests of the consumer in mind. If so, too little too late. And probably beside the point, from the government’s perspective.
toe-holds in Brooklyn?
Maybe this is another beachhead in the efforts by several major Manhattan-based firms to compete in Brooklyn. (If Manhattan real estate practices are in the 20th Century compared to the rest of the country, Brooklyn is still in the 19th Century.) This may be part of a still-to-come public relations effort to further loosen the hold that the several larger Brooklyn firms and the many mom-and-pop shops have on the Brooklyn listing market, in which cooperation among firms is … primitive.
or a different conspiracy?
One possibility for conspiracy theorists is that this portal is another attempt to under-cut the 30+ firms that are not only REBNY members but are also members of the Manhattan Association of Realtors®. This year those firms set up an IDX (Internet Data Exchange) that – like similar Realtor® organizations around the US – permit any MANAR member firm to put other MANAR firms’ listings on their websites (with the exclusive agency identified only in the fine print). So in the rest of the country, where nearly all the firms in most markets are Realtor® firms, consumers can get virtually all listings from the websites of virtually any firm.
Not in Manhattan though, as the REBNY establishment firms have never joined the National Association of Realtors®.
Remember that quote from Warburg’s Peters about the major change in local practice “about a decade ago”, when REBNY firms began to share listing information? Well it was really only about five years ago that REBNY even had a rule that required listings to be shared within 72 hours. Coincidentally or not, that rule change (definitely a major change, btw) followed the formation of MANAR and the agreement by MANAR firms to share exclusive listing data. Coincidence or not, the original MANAR firms formed MANAR after trying within REBNY to get a rule requiring that exclusive listing information be shared on a timely basis.
So maybe this is REBNY’s way to show it is as ‘relevant’ as the Manhattan Association of Realtors®.
confused? Maybe REBNY is too
Or maybe there is no grand conspiracy here; maybe there is no one REBNY is trying to ‘get’. Maybe this is an example of the FUBAR principle at work, as this announcement has drawn opposition from one of the two largest member firms and a whole bunch of its smaller members. Maybe REBNY is just out of touch.
© Sandy Mattingly 2006
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