It’s anything but a whim. Prior to showing up, we’ve often previewed many properties, reviewed listings online, narrowed down candidate properties, and therefore the buyer has an efficient and detailed tour once they arrive in Austin, because much of the weeding out has already happened.

Of course not all buyers do it this way, and we work with buyers at their pace, not ours, but I frankly think it’s a much smarter way to buy a house than to spend months (or years) looking.

See: http://crosslandteam.com/blog/2007/09/02/dont-go-crazy-trying-to-find-the-perfect-austin-home/

Steve

I had to comment on these statements:
“Well, let me put it this way. I’ve sold a lot of houses to buyers who HAD to buy a house in Austin due to relocation here, new job, etc. They fly in on a Thursday, we go out looking Friday, maybe Saturday, by Sunday they have a home under contract and fly home. Nice, isn’t it, that they can accomplish that.

Buyers are always going to need the ability to make that type of purchase. Not all of them, but many still. ”

Wow, I don’t know how anyone could buy a house on a whim like that. When my parents moved us to Austin decades ago, we lived in apartment during the 3mths of summer while they looked for houses. My dad did look at houses for almost 2mths before we all moved here.

My parents did find plenty of houses they liked, but none they were exactly right. The additional time allowed them to get to know the city, the strengths/weaknesses of school districts and drive times. A realtor can summarize these things, but in some cases cannot give blunt critizism for fear for steering buyers into communities. Furthermore, all Realtors have areas that they know, and will be somewhat out otheir element outside of those areas. Plus, new properties come and go all the time. Sometimes it pays to wait and investigate (did in my parents case – found a new home in July right before school started). Mind you, this was all back when listings were in books.

Maybe the buyer’s mentatlity you gave as an example is some of what’s wrong with America.

-Anon

Actually, the research I’ve seen shows that only about 12% of sellers sell without a Realtor, and 40% of those sell to someone they know, which means only about 7% of home sales are true successful FSBO open market efforts.

Out of the last 100+ homes Sylvia and I have sold, only one was a FSBO and, frankly, I think my buyer got a much better deal than the seller could have achieved through MLS exposure.

Steve

Thanks again for the blog. It’s definitely useful.

Buyers are always going to need the ability to make that type of purchase. Not all of them, but many still. There is absolutely no way to accomplish that, in that time frame, and in a fully educated way, without help. That help comes from a Realtor. There will never come a day when buyers have the time and resources to learn everything they need to know about neighborhoods, schools, commute times, other misc info, see all the homes they want to see, and complete the transaction in a timely hassle-free way dealing directly with sellers. It simply ain’t ever gonna happen on a large scale.

Therefore, a system of acquiring and sharing listing access must be in place. A way for a buyer’s agent to locate and show available homes. That system, used by Realtors, is the MLS. The listings therein are Realtor listings and we have a common set of rules, processes and and expectations to follow such that transactions can be done in a way that makes sense for all parties. We pay dues and fees for use and access to the MLS and we have strict guidelines we must follow related to the content of the listings and what can and cannot be published in them.

If what you want is for every home owner to have free access and use of the MLS system, that’s an unreasonable and unworkable idea. It will never happen, for reasons too numerous and lengthy to lay out in this comment.
Steve

We can argue about both all day. Listing a home is probably about the same as posting on craigslist/ebay (getting a lockbox, pricing, ect. are considered as seperate for now). Searching for sales history (past pricing/comparables) is different. That’s closed to non-Realtors, but the information is based upon transactions which sellers/buyers execute. Diy’ers are locked out on both items.

The weird thing of all this is that the Austin Board of Realtors shares sales information with the county tax assesors. So, they are passing sales info from Realtor clients back as a disclosure, when Texas is a nondisclosure state. Thus, if Texas were to move to a disclosure state, #2 above is somewhat fixed, but still not as easy to search as the commercial mls software.

Interesting world we live in.

Anon

you said:
> “I think the question to ask is why shouldn’t consumers selling their house have access to the same information as does a realtor?”

I think the question to ask is the opposite, why should Realtors work hard to create a work product that is then distributed for free to others? If I go out and invest my own money to dig a rock up out of the ground, it’s my rock. If I go out and invest my money to find a seller who wants to be represented by an agent and have his home listed in the MLS, then that’s my listing. You can view it online for free. So in that regard, consumers have full access to the listing data, unlike the old days when we had bi-weekly books that were published and which Realtor retained possession of.

I think your question may be “why can’t a consumer simply list a home for sale in the MLS?” Well, you already can, through a Realtor , and at whatever price you negotiate with that Realtor.

I’m not sure what more is desired, other than to turn the MLS into a free-for-all wild west, such as Craigslist. If that were a more efficient system, then Craigslist would have supplanted the MLS by now, but it’s not a workable search method, in most cases, to contact each individual seller on your own and schedule showings. That would be more combersome and costly than using a Realtor.

Steve

I think the question to ask is why shouldn’t consumers selling their house have access to the same information as does a realtor?

It’s a sad state of affairs that realtors feel they need to “own” all the relevant data in order to have a successful career. Can you imagine the legal Bar arguing that nobody can have access to read a law or court decision unless they’re a member of the Bar? Or the Medical Association arguing that consumers can’t read independently information from drug firms and surgical suppliers?

You’re probably right, eventual impact will be minimal. I just have a problem with how our industry and occupation is misrepresented so often by journalists. And you’re right, NAR looks at everything with rose colored glasses, so they have problems too.

I do wonder though why some think that MLS Data should not be “owned” by the Brokers who obtain the listings though. The MLS was started as a way for Brokers to share listings with each other. It’s our primary business tool, not a public service. If DIY, or FSBO listings were allowed in, it would cause a lot of problems and I’d probably I’d leave the industry.

Steve

All that said, I believe that their are many people who’d like to diy their home selling, but the information they need is “owned” by boards of realtors and the system isn’t setup for diy’s.

All in all, I wouldn’t worry about this CR article – I’ll bet the impact to Realtor’s business is going to be close to 0%.

There’s always a balance.

-Anon

This type of survey system brings out the negative people and liars and you can’t tell accurately how many opposite reviews never got mailed in.

Shireen, I normally don’t put out stats until the middle or end of the month following the month being reported. This is because so many agents are slow to enter their sold listings and, for example,if I ran the stats on the 8th, there would be sales data missing that would be included if I wait until the 15th or later.

Sorry to hear your house hasn’t sold yet. Remember, in a slow market, if you are moving up especially, you come out ahead when moving up so long as you obtain the same price concessions on your purchase as you give on your sale.

Steve

We don’t HAVE to sell, no job change, no divorce, and we can well afford our current house, we’d just like a bigger yard and a slightly different location, so if we don’t sell soon, we will be one of the (more than 30%) who just withdraw our listing.

And for what it is worth — realtors are priceless — all the time; and in a declining/difficult market, they are an absolute necessity!

I stopped reading consumer reports a long time ago when I realized their data gathering model is seriously flawed. They send out long-winded questionnaires to their readers to get data, so they mainly get respondents who are angry and want to complain to someone.

In this case, they didn’t get MLS data…they just got responses from sellers. Imagine if people can’t admit the price is wrong after 3 months on the market, what kind of responses they would put on the survey. Of course everyone is going to say they got what they wanted, the agent sucked and paying half the commission would be just fine. I wouldn’t be surprised if some respondents lied just out of spite.

I only skimmed over the CR report so far, but I think the problems with their survey can be summed up in three words: Self Selected Sample. I recall most of their surveys basically start with asking their subscriber base for volunteers, and the same psychology applies as does with talking about investments. That is, crow about the winners and gloss over the losers. It is plausible that enough readers who had a bad experience like expiring their listing, taking a haircut on sale price, or a short sale won’t feel like talking about it to skew results on a volunteer survey.

CR’s auto reliability ratings have suffered from this effect for years. It’s a shame because they used to offer good objective tests of products. Lately they’ve deteriorated into subjective opinions and poorly designed testing. I made the mistake of trusting their advice on our dishwasher and clothes washer in the past two years. Never again!

That might be what you’re attempting to say in your post. But it’s not clear that CR is misrepresenting or misstating anything. They’re just talking about the results from their own questionnaire.