REBNY's paltry portal launches Friday (yawn)
not with a bang but awhimper
It will have taken nearly a yearfor the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) to bring out itspublic portal for searching exclusive Manhattan rental and saleslistings by the time this thing is introduced on Friday. (THX toCurbed for the reference to The Real Deal’s article yesterday.)
I am not going to go through theentire sordid history here (as I did on May 18 portal potted / REBNY website to limp out inSeptember).Suffice it to say that The Real Deal’s report that Bellmarc is notparticipating seems a bit like beating a dead horse.
As I recounted in the May 18 recap,REBNY announced this thing a year ago as if all the Big Girls andBig Boys in the Manhattan residential real estate sand box were onboard, then ran into trouble with the so-called ‘small firms’, thenran into trouble from the Two Biggest Girls in the sand box(Corcoran and PruDE), and now looks like it will launch with twoaffiliates (Brown Harris and Halstead) and a few otherfirms.
how lovely,not
Here is the opportunity that hasbeen lost, perhaps irrevocably:
In concept, there would be none ofthe phantom or open listings that plague NYTimes.com. Potentially,this portal would have up-to-date links for 95+% of the apartmentsreally for sale in Manhattan – since REBNY memberfirms probably have that large a portion of the for-salemarket.
In theory, buyers would want tostart a search here, rather than wade through the garbage onNYTimes.com, then look to NYTimes.com for the for-sale-by-owners orto take a chance on wasting times calling agents who offer vaguedescriptions of apartments that are too good to be true (or whooffer the same vague descriptions of apartments as three otherfirms offer about the same apartments).
Possibly, the public would begin toappreciate that information provided by REBNY firms, and thebusiness practices of these firms, are “better” than theinformation and business practices of non-REBNY firms. Over time,consumers might look at the public web portal as The Best sourcefor information, and the easiest way to click through to theindividual REBNY firm websites for details about interestinglistings.
why can’t we all just getalong?
And what a cost:
Whatever the behind the scenes knifework, if I were Diane Ramirez or Fred Peters I would be embarrassedat not being able to deliver what had been grandly and prematurelyannounced. If I am Pam Liebman or Dottie Herman I would not beproud of myself, either.
If I were a consumer frustrated withthe phantom listings and evident low ethics of real estate firms asdemonstrated on NYTimes.com I would be unhappy with all thebastards.
I don’t think you’ll hear muchchampagne popping on Friday. I can only hope that this crippledthing shows enough potential for other member firms (like mine!) tocome on board soon.
Don’t hold yourbreath.
© Sandy Mattingly 2007
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