Free system puts agents in charge of Web marketing
By Glenn Roberts Jr.
Inman News
A
real estate technology company today launched a free international
service to assist real estate professionals with marketing properties
online, establishing agreements with other professionals and tracking
Web statistics.
Point2 Technologies Inc. officials say that their
creation, called the Point2 NLS (for National Listing Service), is a
marketing vehicle that is not intended to compete with traditional
multiple listing services.
It is the latest in a series of free Web-based
tools designed to increase the online exposure of property listings --
officials at automated home-valuation site Zillow.com, for example,
announced a new service last month to allow agents to advertise
for-sale property listings.
The new Point2 system builds upon the company's
existing technologies and customer base. At launch the company already
has about 104,000 members in 85 countries. In November, the company
announced that 78 percent of its members were in the United States and
14 percent were in Canada, followed by Australia, India and the
Philippines. The company offers a consumer-facing property-search Web
site at Point2Homes.com.
"Our NLS gives complete control to the broker so
that he can choose who his marketers are on a peer-to-peer basis," said
Brendan King, chief operating officer for Point2 Technologies. "There
are no regional boundaries. Searching on the NLS, both for real estate
professionals and consumers, won't be bound necessarily by geography."
Also, creators say the service is intended to
thwart antitrust actions by allowing real estate professionals to make
individual decisions about how to market property information on other
Web sites. For example, agents participating in the system can select
which agents they choose to share listings information with -- and
which agents not to share listings information with.
This peer-to-peer system of "Agent Handshake"
agreements also allows agents to state specific reasons why they choose
not to share listings information with specific real estate
professionals, and calculates a performance index score for agents
based on a variety of factors such as speed in replying to prospects
and number of virtual tours and total Web site pages.
King said that the NLS system "now is outside the
realm of the Federal Trade Commission or the Department of Justice
because (real estate professionals) are making individual business
decisions."
The Justice Department is locked in antitrust
litigation with the National Association of Realtors, for example, over
the Realtor group's approval of policies for the online sharing and
display of property listings information, and the Federal Trade
Commission announced several actions last year to combat MLS policies
that it deemed anti-competitive.
There are several national Web services that
offer real estate professionals a place to share information about
for-sale properties at no charge, such as Edgeio, Google Base,
LiveDeal, Oodle, Propsmart, Trulia, and Yahoo! Classifieds, among
others, and the Point2 service gives real estate professionals the
option to share property information with these sites.
This so-called "Exposure Engine" also allows
agents to choose paid advertising for property listings on sites such
as NYTimes.com.
The system offers detailed statistics on consumer
traffic to property-search Web sites that can assist real estate
professionals in determining which marketing venues are most successful.
While basic services for the Point2 NLS are free,
the company does charge for advanced features, such as "predictive
marketing" analysis that assists real estate professionals in tracking
the online behavior and real estate interests of specific users.
Also, there are other lead-prospecting and
text-messaging tools available for a fee. The company has made a name
in the industry by building real estate Web sites and offering selling
tools to assist with online marketing and lead management.
While several of the free online
property-marketing services allow homeowners to list their own
properties for sale, Point2 is focused on properties represented by
real estate professionals. Most of the participants in the system are
agents, and King said that agents are required to get broker permission
to market listings in the system.
"It's really the brokers who are in control of the listing content," he said.
The traditional MLS system, which features
hundreds of local, regional and statewide MLSs across the country, are
not integrated and employ a wide array of business rules, membership
fees and data standards.
Many MLSs are operated by Realtor trade groups,
and in some cases membership in the Realtor trade group is tied to
membership in the trade group's MLS. The Point2 NLS system does not
require Realtor or MLS membership, though many of the nation's real
estate licensees are also Realtors and members of at least one MLS.
Jay Thompson, a real estate agent in Mesa, Ariz.,
and a Point2 user since August 2005, said he has separate sections on
his own Web site for posting shared property information derived from
local MLS members and a separate section for posting properties from
the Point2 network.
"My MLS lets me put (up to) six pictures in a
listing. Point2 lets you put 36 -- I get a lot more views on my Point2
listings," he said. "I put a lot more pictures, so people tend to
naturally gravitate toward the listings that have more information."
Thompson, who works for Century 21 Aware, likens
the Point2 capabilities to that of Google Base, Trulia or Zillow --
"It's just another Web venue for me to advertise listings on. It's not
going to replace the MLS; that's not its intent." He said he has
established agreements through the Point2 network with about 1,100 real
estate professionals in the area where he works, and he explains this
to prospective clients during listing presentations.
Some industry participants may not embrace the
concept of the Point2 NLS at first, Thompson said. But after they
realize "that it's not an attempt to take over their world then they
should be OK with it," he added.
Saul D. Klein, a real estate industry speaker and
consultant and creator of the e-PRO real estate technology
certification program, said that the concept for the Point2 NLS "is a
great one," though the company is "going to have challenges."
"The ability for people to choose their own
marketing partners is, to me, where the industry needs to go," said
Klein, who is also president of Internet Crusade, an Internet marketing
company and an online community of real estate professionals.
While there has been industry controversy over
how information is shared among real estate professionals, Klein said
that Point2 seems to have the right idea with its "Handshake"
agreements. "You should have the right to choose who you share your
listings information with," he said. "I think that's a good thing, and
I encourage that kind of participation. It's up to the Realtor ... and
not the Department of Justice."
Klein said there is potential for MLSs to
misinterpret the intent of the Point2 NLS system, and that could be an
obstacle for the system. "I'm intimately aware of the politics of MLSs,
and I think if they understand it it won't be a problem. But if they
don't understand it it will be a nightmare -- people will react out of
fear and not out of fact."
He added, "I believe that if the MLSs take a hard
look at this they will see that it's not competition -- there is more
competition from major search portals."
The cat is already out of the bag when it comes
to the distribution of property listings information, Klein said,
noting that real estate professionals now have many online venues to
market properties.
"To be able to compete now -- to defend yourself
-- you have to let it go to a number of places, otherwise one place
does become more powerful," he said. "The days where we put it on
Realtor.com or only put it in two or three places, I think we've
outgrown that."
Brokers, too, may have a negative reaction to the
NLS system, Klein said, and the company must show the industry "that
they are not there to take anything away from them," but rather to
enhance the industry and provide more choice. "We know that there
always is resistance," he said.
Realtor.com, a National Association of
Realtors-affiliated site operated by Move Inc., remains a dominant
player for online property searches, Klein also said, though systems
such as the Point2 NLS may push the industry toward "fuller, richer
content on the Internet."
With so many sites competing for Internet
eyeballs, it remains to be seen whether Point2 NLS will gather
significant participation to change the industry, Klein said. "A lot of
companies spend a lot of money getting products to market. I think if
it gets the right traction it can be an industry-changing thing.
Getting the right traction is tough."