Last week, I attended my very first Clareity MLS Executive Workshop. I have to say that Gregg Larson, Matt Cohen and team did a great job with the event. It was very well attended, even exceeding the attendance mentioned on the site. Hats off for a great show!
The main discussions centered around agent ratings, RPR, public web sites, RPR, syndication and more RPR. Notice a theme? More on that in a later post….
An interesting discussion was around ratings and reviews. Gregg at Clareity led off by citing examples at Yelp and Insider Pages. I find it interesting how many parallels we continue to see between the yellow page local search industry and the real estate search industry.
For years, the yellow pages industry struggled with allowing consumers to rate or review local businesses. The concerns were, “What if my advertiser gets a really bad rating?” and “What if their competitors just write negative reviews about them?”. This really is the same set of questions being asked in the real estate industry today.
The good news is the yellow pages industry got over it, allowed it and now it’s hard to find a yellow pages site that doesn’t have ratings and reviews. I predict you will see reviews and ratings occurring in the real estate industry over the next few years.
In the meantime, here are two examples from the Clareity show of how the real estate industry is addressing ratings and reviews:
Bob Hale from the Houston Association of Realtors (HAR) and Dallas Hancock from the Peoria Area Association of Realtors (PAAR) spoke about their efforts in agent ratings by consumers.
HAR’s approach was to survey buyers and sellers in the transactions and then give the results to agents. The agents have the option of publishing the results on HAR’s consumer-facing web site. Consumers can then search for agents by overall rating and view the rating details. I’m not positive, but I think it was a all or nothing approach. All of an agent’s ratings are reviews are put in or none of them. They also allow rating on the consumer site with a “report abuse” feature to flag inappropriate use.
PAAR’s approach was funded by the NAR “Game Changer” program. PAAR focused more on rating the entire transaction experience. Consumers rated everyone involved in the transaction, including the realtor, lender, home inspector, attorney and other service providers. The results are sent back to the agents and brokers through a series of reports. The key here is that consumers could not access the information.
So, what’s your take? Will the industry soon embrace ratings and reviews? Do you already use ratings and reviews on your site? Tell us about it in the comments.
Watch for upcoming posts on other hot topics from the Clareity Workshop, including RPR.
Pingback: Credigy Receivables | Forex Broker Ratings – Fx Broker Reviews And Ratings
Pingback: CMLS 2010: Three Key Takeaways for the Future of the MLS | Local Matters Blog
I fail to see how this an appropriate exercise for an MLS. The sooner they return to their original mission of maintaining a database for member brokers to facilitate offers of compensation the greater their chance for survival.
Yes, I understand your point of view. We have had ratings and reviews in our Yellow Pages (YP) product for a few years now, it took time for the YP industry to embrace them and I didn’t think we would ever offer it in the MLS market.
I think what has happened recently with HAR and Peroria is they felt that ratings and reviews are happening now as we speak on a lot of other sites. Realtors have very little control over these sites. Some in the industry think the realtors through their MLS should “control the dialog” by providing one place that is somewhat viewed as indepedent, the MLS. It would be hard for a broker site to do the same as it would be viewed as biased to their agents.
But I understand your point concerning the scope and mission of the MLS.
Building public access websites, marketing, controlling the dialog, right-sizing for the 21st century, building gigantic buildings, offering training, attending conventions, hosting cocktail parties, lobbying politicians… you name it, and some sharp salesman somewhere is talking some dim-witted MLS Board into it.
Meanwhile- Someone’s going to back to low-cost basics and drink their milkshake.