About four hours after I asked what we as real estate agents have taught our clients, Teresa Boardman followed a similar line of thought:

In the six months that the home was on the market there were only two showings.  Neither of the parties who saw the home took any of the marketing materials. Providing information to buyers and having it in the home is important, but not as important as marketing the home so that buyers find it in the first place. 

Couldn’t have said it better myself … though I certainly tried.

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When Zillow.Com first gave the public the opportunity to report homes for sale, adding such homes in my farm areas was a no-brainer. Greg referred to the practice as peeing on trees, I simply was happy to be marking territory with Tobey’s picture.

Such a simple act was the subject of considerable debate here and elsewhere. MLS rules prohibit one agent from advertising another brokerage’s listings without written permission. I and others argued that we weren’t “advertising” in the truest sense. Rather, we were doing little more than presenting a fact - this home is for sale.

Advertising rules required the listing brokerage to be displayed prominently, just as they are on the IDX searches on my website, and all Zillow entries were duly marked.

Unfortunately, that functionality - the ability to enter the name of the listing brokerage - is gone. And so it is that I’ve spent time I expected to spend marking territory unmarking the very same territory. Because without the ability to enter the name of the listing brokerage, I cannot report the information at all.

Zillow’s undergone a handful of changes over the past few weeks. My assumption is the change was made with little thought given to possible consequences. It would seem to be in Zillow’s best interest to allow the information to be entered and give the nod to a state’s advertising rules. In the area in which I had marked the listings, the total homes for sale fell 70% once my reports were withdraw. That can’t be good for a portal that openly seeks listings information.

Hopefully, this will be one change they reverse in short order.

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Here’s one of the dirty little secrets of Real Estate 2.0. In many ways, we’ve done a terrible job of taking clients along for the ride.

Buyers have adapted to the changes as technology has simplified their end of the bargain. They can search for homes whenever they choose just by opening a web browser. But for most sellers, it seems real estate technology is an excuse not to work hard on a sale.

So what have we taught our clients, particularly our sellers? Consider this a Realtor’s list of sins, al chait shechatanu levanecha …

We have taught our clients that open houses matter, that open houses sell homes, when in reality 99% of all open houses are staged by agents looking either to pick up some buyers or some neighborhood listings. And we predicate this myth with “I just sold a house at an open house a couple of weeks ago.” Sure you did.

We have taught our clients that extra frills such as property books inside the home will be the deciding factor in selling a home. Property books, with a copy of the Sellers Property Disclosure Statement and information on local schools, can be invaluable. But you have to get buyers in the door first, and in focusing on the in-house extras many agents skip past how they’ll get buyers into the home in the first place.

We have taught our clients that the heavier the paper and the prettier the colors on the property flyers, the better. We know better. So do our sellers. Or at least they should, since a large percentage of sellers meeting with a listing agent will pull out a stack of flyers from other homes for sale in the neighborhood. They aren’t buying these homes. They’re just taking the flyers. Few flyers end up in the hands of buyers.

We have taught our clients that throwing money at a problem solves everything. Not a lot of traffic? Run a newspaper ad. Never mind that newspapers are dying (I’m overdue for my requiem on last week’s demise of the Arrowhead Ranch Independent, caused mostly by declining ad revenue.) Never mind that buyers are online looking for homes. Sellers want to see those classified ads.

We have taught our clients that agents are driving the buying process. We’re not. Yes, an agent will send properties to his or her buyers. But they’ll likely receive as many or more in return. Why? Because there’s little need for the middleman when it comes to searching for homes. Our role as agents has changed - finding the home is the easy part. Negotiating the contract all the way through to the closing is where our expertise comes into play.

We have taught our clients that Internet marketing is easy and inexpensive. At least, we haven’t disabused them on this notion. Given there are more than one million Realtors in this country, and a relative handful of actual players on the online stage, clearly selling real estate on the web effectively isn’t easy. But it happens every day, for those in the know.

Lastly, we have taught our clients that activity is an adequate substitute for results. At the end of the day, it’s shameful that sellers can be placated with an open house or it’s nearly as useless cousin, the agent tour. It’s ludicrous that we have convinced our homeowners that seven agents visiting your home even as they harbor the sole agenda of selling their own listing is an adequate substitute for actual marketing.

Let corporate America be masters of the domain of busy work in lieu of results. There’s no place for that in real estate.

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