Last week I posted a letter from the NAR’s Vice President of Public Affairs and Strategic Planning, Steve Cook, in response to the 60 Minutes segment examining the impact of online brokerages on the real estate industry.
On Friday Richard Bonin, Producer CBS News – 60 Minutes responded to that letter with a letter of his own. It reads in part, “I’m sorry that you and your colleagues at the National Association of Realtors feel our report was one-sided. I respectfully disagree. We made a real effort to be fair and I feel our report reflected that.” Read the entire 60 Minutes response here.
Additionally, Bonin addressed some of NAR’s concerns in an editor’s note that he said would be posted on the 60 Minutes’ web site. He included a draft of the editor’s note in his letter to NAR.
However, the editor’s note didn’t placate Steve Cook, who sent a follow-up letter to Bonin requesting revisions to the editor’s note that more accurately depict the reality of real estate commissions today. Read the NAR’s rebuttal here.
Where will this end? Perhaps it’s already beginning to blow over. Today was fairly quiet around the water cooler. Additionally, the NAR seems to be toning down its rhetoric. I saw the words “thanks”, “please”, and “sincerely” in the latest letter to CBS.
Austin Realtor's Wife
Here in Texas (where Redfin doesn’t swim), it was business as usual. Most people here (1) don’t watch 60 Minutes and (2) don’t have a clue what Redfin is.
I had a local Realtor address this on Realtor Wives and he noted that the phones still rang (http://realtorwives.blogspot.com/2007/05/from-shark-to-perch-in-60-minutes.html).
In short, I agree with your assertion that this WILL blow over.
Reno Ignoramus
Guy:
This request is off topic, but I want to ask it anyway. Since you do such a great job of mining the MLS for data, I was wondering if it is possible for you to determine what percentage of houses listed on the MLS are owned by realtors? I know that it must be disclosed if the seller is a realtor, and I am wondering if you can extract that info?
Thanks for your continued fine contributions to the blog.
Guy Johnson
Reno Ignoramus,
You’ve asked an intriguing question. You are correct that real estate agents must disclose as much when selling their own property. This disclosure is usually done in the Remarks section of the listing; something to the effect of “Seller is a licensed Nevada real estate agent.”
However, I do not know of an easy way to search through the remarks in order to pull out all the listings that are owned by agents.
If this characteristic were an input field by itself, then I’d be able to use it as a search criterion.
Diane, do you know of a way to accomplish this task?
Diane Cohn
Guy, I know of no way to accomplish this. As you point out, if it were a check box, we could search on it. But since these disclosures always appear in the private remarks, which our software does not allow us to search, I don’t see how we could possibly pull the data. If I had to guess based on my experience searching properties for buyers, I would guess about 10-20%. Disclaimer: this is a total guesstimate.
Reno Ignoramus
Guy and Diane:
Thanks for trying.
Mike Van H
Reno Ignoramous, I have to check with my client to make sure it won’t breach any MLS agreement, but I have access to the raw database itself because my design firm downloads it from Northern Nevada MLS and merges the data onto several realtor web sites we have designed and built (see my previous comment on how MLS actually works, it’s SO antiquated). If you know the exact wording in the remarks column of each listing sold by a realtor, or if its consistent with each listing, I can write a search query string to search the downloaded MLS database and come up with some kind of percentage for you.
Reno Ignoramus
Mike Van H,
It would be most appreciated if you could come up with that data. However, if you can’t, I understand and thanks for inquiring.