One of the things I’ve always found most amusing (and sad) about Main Stream Media is that for the most part they seem to have the attention span of a goldfish. The MSM will take up almost any story if it contains at least one of the following seven elements:
- HARM (blood, violence, damage, death, scandal)
- SEX
- MONEY
- BIG NAMES
- INVALIDATION (the story must be written to INVALIDATE something)
- The story must contain a CONTROVERSY
- A story must contain TWO OPPOSING FORCES.
The more of those seven elements the story has – the bigger the story. Therefore, the story of the century was the O.J. murder trial. It contained all seven and no story, with the exception of September 11, 2001, ever got more continuous coverage. What is “news” is largely determined by how many of the above seven elements any story contains. It seldom has much to do with how relevant or important the issue might be to the lives of the audience – just the seven points above. Sometimes something “bad” happens and becomes news for just a day or so because some new story comes along that contains several of the seven points (the reporters and editors saw something new that is really really shiny).
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A few weeks ago it was a very big issue in the real estate blog world that there were FSBOs on Realtor.com. At the time, I wrote a post about this. This whole thing has now died down like it is all fixed. But,THERE ARE FSBO LISTINGS ON REALTOR.COM. Again, there are FSBO listings on Realtor.com. The issue hasn’t gone away. It isn’t handled. I don’t care who said what. Nothing has changed. FSBO listings are on Realtor.com. Ultimately, the correct information was contained in an article on Inman News and a comment from a flat fee broker:
I CAN TELL YOU HOW THIS WORKS! I have been researching this and I know how this realtor.com showcased forsalebyowner.com package works.
First forsalebyowner.com sends the listing to a CA broker at https://elist.me then she places the listing in her local CA MLS. Now lets say the listing is in CT. The claim is that you offer a 1% co-broke, but what CA agent is looking for CT homes on the local MLS? NONE. this is how they can say you dont pay any commission.
Basicly they are using one broker to list all the homes in CA MLS. They will show on realtor.com, they set the fsbo seller up with a extension/voicemail on the toll free number, they forward all emails to the seller… Walla! forsalebyowner on the realtor.com site.
The BIG question is “is this legal” for a CA broker to list a CT home? I am looking into this right now. If so, that’s the loophole that makes all this work.
NAR put out an official statement. They said the press release from ForSaleByOwner.com was misleading. I went so far as calling the ForSaleByOwner.com spokesman a liar. I should probably clarify that: AN INTENTIONAL BIG GIANT LIAR. Oh sure, he was telling the truth that there are FSBO listings on Realtor.com – but it wasn’t because of the DOJ/NAR settlement. It was because someone at his company found a currently open exploitable hole in the system. As in, we took an area where Realtors are on the honor system and found a way to abuse the system. His press release should have said, We fully understand that no one who pays this money is ever going to sell their house because of it but you will have to admit, it sure sounds good. For ForSaleByOwner.com Vice President, Greg Healy, here is my contact information in case you would like one of your lawyers to send me a threatening letter. I always love receiving them.
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It is a currently open hole. It is using one of the more retarded options in the MLS system, out of area listings. Originally thought of as a method for brokers to list vacation homes for their clients, it is now being used as an end run around the intended rules. A simple way to plug the hole is to completely eliminate “out of area listings” from all MLS systems. I have always thought of them as completely unnecessary in the first place.
