Who’s Doing the Scoring?
Today Jim Duncan wrote a post on considerations for an agent score card. It couldn’t have been any better timed for the article that I am writing now. I completely feel him and would like to see agents more concerned about their standings in the public view.
A few days ago one of my twitter buddies asked if any of us had heard of homethinking.com. I hadn’t and went to the page. I found that it’s some sort of database of agents and I have no recall of signing up for the service or being made aware that I was part of it.
Get Your Facts Correct, Please
There have been several great posts written all over the RE.net in regards to online reputation and how important it is and will continue to be. Therefore, having correct information linked to your name is very important.
Here’s what I found on homethinking.com:
For those who don’t know, I was a Realtor-Broker until November of 2007 when I became an Education Director at a local Association. Therefore I haven’t listed or sold real estate in about 10 months. This webpage has me with a company that I was the Managing Broker for, about three years ago and left to work at another company from then till going to work where I do now. It also shows that I have only sold 4 homes and that I have active listings, totally 42. That basically makes me look like I couldn’t sell free bottled water to people eating dirt in the desert.
Does it Matter?
In this case I think it’s irrelevant what homethinking has in their database, because I am not actively practicing, it took forever to find my information and I don’t think anyone is using the service. However, if they were it’s interesting that my wife, who is a Realtor can’t be found in the database.
I am in a unique position in this regard. However, if I were still practicing and found that I lost a listing, because this inaccurate information makes it appear that I only sell about 10% of my inventory and that I just may have too many listings to properly care for, I would pretty sure to take action to recover that lost income.
What’s the Take-away?
If and when an Agent database site is setup, hopefully it will be a wiki site like, www.FranklyMLS.com that will allow agents to “defend” the information about them online. I hope that there will be a live chat to the host of the website to get immediate opportunities to correct bad information and I think these sites should be required to disclose the source of their information.
I’d say that all agents should rountly Google themselves or Searchme.com, however even Googling this particular company and my name doesn’t come up. So, keep a diligent eye out and if it matters to you (it should) take action to get correct information.
