HAR Agents Express Concern Over ‘REALTOR Match’
By Tom Butala
According to Inman News, despite the crowning of ‘Most Innovative Web Service’ at the 2010 ‘Real Estate Connect’ event in San Francisco, the Houston Association of REALTORS’ (HAR) ‘REALTOR Match’ service has proven to be controversial among members of the HAR.
‘REALTOR Match,’ the state-of-the-art service launched by the HAR in April works in correspondence with MLS data to provide consumers a listing of agents and the properties they represent in a given area. However, the transparent nature of ‘REALTOR Match’ quickly attracted a barrage of disapproval from many HAR agents.
“We hadn’t sold (the benefits of the platform)” to all agents, HAR CEO Bob Hale told Inman News.
According to Inman, some HAR members expressed concern that ‘REALTOR Match’ would play in favor of experienced agents, putting REALTORS with limited transaction history or listings at a disadvantage.
Justin LaJoie who is CEO of Diverse Solutions, the developer of ‘REALTOR Match,’ communicates with Inman his belief that volume of transactions is not the bottom-line for consumers when selecting an agent.
Evaluation of data “can go either way depending on who’s looking… and what they’re looking for,” says LaJoie.
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I told an Inman reporter back in March of this year, prior to HAR’s launch of “Realtor Match”, that HAR would fail to provide a reliable web based tool for matching consumers with the most qualified real estate agent for a given consumer’s request/needs. In short, Realtor Match would fail.
It didn’t take a lot of intuition to come to this conclusion. It had to be the case because MLSs are highly politicized bureaucracies, run by real estate brokers and agents, for real estate agents and brokers. And so, you are asking the wolves to guard the hens, so to speak and we all know that never works. Wolves are too hungry to guard hens!
The real estate industry needs more transparency in order to operate efficiently. HAR’s attempt to deliver this service to the public is a direct acknowledgment that consumers need and want this service (desperately) but the backlash is a direct result of the fact that this service does not serve the interest of the majority of real estate agents or the “average Realtor”.
Instead, this service, if not adulterated, would enable customers to hire their real estate agent based on their recent or historical performance and not on hype and spin. That’s the problem from the industry’s standpoint.
It’s going to take a private company to deliver this service, like NeighborCity® which launched Agent Match® at http://www.NeighborCity.com
Jonathan Cardella
Founder/CEO, NeighborCity.com
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