Internet Realty Realities
"If you're a traditional Realtor®, then you must be against the Internet," a very good friend said to me the other day. His words caused me to pause and to consider the damage that is being done to our profession by the recent 60 Minutes segment and other stories that have created the impression that there are two kinds of brokerages today, those that use the Internet and those that don't.
First Point. The only reason that there is a real estate industry on the Internet in the first place is that listings are online--more than 4 million of them at any given moment. This did not happen by magic. It happened because the hundreds of thousands of brokers who own those listings signed up home sellers, put a listing together, and agreed to let their competitors use their listing to attract business. Then they built state-of-the art Web sites to do the same.
Foresight, cooperation, innovation, risk-that's what "traditional Realtors®" had to have to make it possible for today's "untraditional" brokers to get into business. Nowhere else in the world can you peruse so much property in your bedroom slippers. Indeed, what other industry allows one member to use another's inventory to attract business?
