Dear Valued Customer, Grrrrr

coastal · #**1 Dear Valued Customer, Grrrrr** 11-16-2006, 12:19 PM

Quote:

In order to be of assistance in your budgeting process, we would like to inform you with as much advance notice as possible about our January 15, 2007 price change. We do not take lightly the impact any price increase (like any product or service any person buys) has on you, our customer. In order to continue to advertise all basic listings for free, not charge referral fees, and to purchase traffic for REALTOR.com®, it is necessary to have a source for generating revenue and thus remain competitive, and allow REALTOR.com® to remain in business. That said, we firmly believe that the value rendered by REALTOR.com® Marketing Systems are monumentally greater than the price charged to REALTORS®.

Just as REALTOR.com® carefully evaluates a number of factors before arriving at the aforementioned business decision to raise prices, so too do we encourage each individual REALTOR® to carefully evaluate the value you receive on behalf of you and your clients in relationship to the costs, before you make your individual business decision. It is for this reason that we eliminated automatic renewals so that only those REALTORS®, who carefully contemplated the value of utilizing REALTOR.com® beyond its basic free program, would be the ones who renewed their respective REALTOR.com® Marketing Systems and products. In order to carefully contemplate REALTOR.com® value, we are providing a minimum of two months to a maximum of twelve months advance notice of the price change (depending upon the REALTOR'S® product renewal date), because we believe this should be a carefully thought out evaluation. It is a privilege to serve those of you who seek to provide even greater value for your current and prospective clients.

Details of the price increase: Beginning January 15, 2007, prices for the Showcase Listing Enhancements Marketing System, Standard Listing Enhancements, Featured Homes™ Marketing System and Featured CMA™ Marketing System will increase by 10% and the Featured Community™ and Featured Agent™ Marketing System will increase by 7%. Your agreement will be unaffected until the date of your agreement renewal. The price you paid or are paying monthly, will not change until expiration of your current agreement.

If you have any questions that require immediate attention on these upcoming changes, we encourage you to contact your Account Executive by calling 800-878-4166. And again, on behalf of everyone here at REALTOR.com®, we thank you for the privilege of serving you and helping you better serve your clients.

Sincerely,

Mark Mathis
Senior Vice President,
REALTOR.com®

I think I'm done with Realtor . com greedy MF's
For those of you who don't know I specialize in the resort mobile home market and I usually have a pretty large inventory. Many of my homes are less than $25K

Realtor . com charges you by how many homes you have listed and does not take price into consideration. I had to pay them just as much as a Realtor with an inventory of 40 homes in the $500,000 price range. Even after chatting with them for an hour they were not willing to lower my rate.

ResaleBroker · 11-16-2006, 05:40 PM

Just curious... why would "price range" be a factor in Realtor.com's pricing structure? Do you not receive the same services as agent's with more expensive listings?

coastal · 06:28 AM

Yes I get the same services but I have to sell 10 times the homes to make the same income as an agent selling more expensive homes.

When Realtor . com came up with their pricing I'm sure they thought something like "Ok, we will charge these realtors x% of their potential commission on an average sale. If an average home is $275K these days then people like me get screwed and people selling multi million dollar homes get a free ride.

Not that anything in life is fair but I have to spend the same amount for Realtor . com's extra services as someone who will make a great deal more money per sale than I will.

If they decided to make it a bit more fair they could work the way Ebay does and charge a % of the sales price or a % of the list price.

Ebay provides the same service to everyone but you will pay ebay a much larger % on the sale of a Porsche 911 than the sale of a new pair of sunglasses.

ResaleBroker · 11-17-2006, 06:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by coastal

If they decided to make it a bit more fair they could work the way Ebay does and charge a % of the sales price or a % of the list price.

Do you think that plan would be considered fair by those who are selling homes in price ranges above yours?

atxrealtor · 09:20 AM

R.com is a waste of time anyway. How many people do you know that one fine day get on realtor.com, see a house they like and buy it. It's a website that's just a starting point, and most will eventually make their way to local realtors' websites to search IDX, and then contact the realtor for help.

If we did more to educate the public about just how worthless R.com is for selling their home, there would be no need to buy advertising space to please the clients and R.com would go out of business.

Just wanted to add...what R.com does amounts to extortion. They take OUR listings, run some ads about how great R.com is to create the impression that they are THE place where people look for homes, and then they use the public's enthusiasm against us in order to induce us to buy featured home spots or other ads on their website. They even hold conventions (I've been to one) extolling the benefits of R.com (sometimes they do it together with the Top Producer folks).

Does R.com even pay anything to NAR for using the listings?

coastal · 09:45 AM

I'd agree 100% if I did not get at least 5 inquiries a week from realtor .com and during my summer selling season it's at least two or three a day. Not all of them turn into sales but at least a few of them do.

I agree it's a scam selling our mls info back to us but I do get a few sales because of it. If the money I make is more than I invest it's still an ok deal.

Last year I paid them about $1700 and probably made $10K - $15K It's still 100% better than my newspaper ads which cost $1000 a month and may be responsible for 1 or 2 sales all year. I do it for my Buyers who like to see their homes in the paper and as a tax write off.

Jeff, I think it would be fair for everyone if they charged by a % system.

If I sell a $40K house and make $2000 I should not have to pay as much as a Realtor who sells a 900K house and makes $15,000.

Maybe I should just start selling more expensive homes and quit my complaining :-)

Ryan Ward · 11-17-2006, 10:17 AM

That email yesterday may have driven in the nail that I started hammering in over the last month. I will look long and hard before I renew my enhanced listings next year. Which sucks because I will have to remove it from all of my marketing materials. I closed one deal this year (got both sides) from them. My problem is that it is hard to know whether or not the added exposure drove any of my other listings to sell because a buyer found the house and used another agent. This is simple ROI. Coastal it sounds like you generate a good deal of business with them. My hope is that by putting together an excellent website of my own, that I will be able to know myself and tell my clients that money that I spend on advertising is better spent on my website other other various local advertising. The reality is that every new website that pops up on the internet showing everyone else's listings dilutes REALTOR . com's internet market share that much more.

atxrealtor · 11-17-2006, 10:20 AM

Coastal: maybe it works for you b/c it's a small town. Out here austinhomesearch dot com works very well. Anyone can just come in and search for properties and see all photos, and the agent's contact info is shown as well. It's way better than R.com so no way will I ever pay for their "services". I'd just show sellers how austinhomesearch works.

ResaleBroker · 11-17-2006, 10:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by coastal

Jeff, I think it would be fair for everyone if they charged by a % system.

If I sell a $40K house and make $2000 I should not have to pay as much as a Realtor who sells a 900K house and makes $15,000.

Again, just curious... Imagine that a real estate agent sold a $400k listing but only earned a flat fee of $2k (This happens!). Should this real estate agent still pay the higher fee based on list/sales price for the exact same services?

coastal · 11-17-2006, 03:06 PM

Ok, so make the amount paid based on the amount of the commission check cut to the listing agent. All I'm saying is I don't like paying realtor. com $1700 for a link. I don't care much about all the enhanced listing features but I do want a link to my website and I don't believe they give that away for free.

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