I read about the outlawing of web site URLs in listings on the “Welcome to Tempo” page of the Arizona Regional Multiple Listings Services (ARMLS), but I wasn’t certain it meant what it seemed to mean. Since I have been a Realtor, we have promoted our single-property websites in the remarks section of the listing, as have many other agents. It seemed odd to me, given how anal ARMLS had been about contact information in virtual tours, but I thought it was a laudable concession to real life in the third millennium.
We talk in web sites — Bloodhound Realty does, particularly. We live in webbed-wide world. This is news to no one. The appropriate way to talk about houses is in web sites. Hurray for ARMLS! It doesn’t really “get it,” but it gets at least some of it.
Not so.
Comes today this email:
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Gregory Swann ABR CRS GRI,
Our new iCheck program identified the following Error. The Error and any related verbiage was removed on Thursday, March 6, 2008.
MLS#: 0000000 TEMPORARILY OFF MARKET/RES
Error: MLS Rule Error (000)
Description: Prohibited URLNo further action is required by you at this time.
Thank you for complying with the ARMLS Rules and Regulations.
I know, I know, you don’t have to tell me. I understand, I just don’t approve.
First, this is an artifact of the co-broke, the archaic practice of buyer’s representatives being paid by the listing agent. If commissions were divorced, all of the Top Secrets of the MLS system — every one of which is a violation of the buyer’s agent’s fiduciary duty to put the buyer’s interests ahead of all others (which most certainly includes the seller and the listing agent) — would be swept away like the dusty relics of the anti-capitalist era that they are.
Second, the specific purpose of forbidding web site URLs in listings is to impose an artificial chokepoint on the free market. Buyer’s agent’s seek to hold their own clients hostage in the transaction. In order to secure their own compensation, they will withhold the fact of the buyer’s existence and identity from the seller or the listing agent, at the same time that they are withholding information about the existence and identity of the seller or listing agent from their own buyers — toward whom they owe an unlimited fiduciary duty. I think this is an agency violation in se — a complete betrayal of the buyer’s true interests — and ARMLS makes itself a party to it by deliberately withholding material facts from buyers.
I don’t like lawyers and lawsuits, but I cannot imagine how the MLS system, nationwide, could be any more exposed to a massive class-action lawsuit. Buyer’s agency is a farce as long as these rules are in place. It is simply sub-agency in camouflage. The first attorney to figure that out is going to retire rich.
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Patrick says:
Well, it doesn`t say you can`t photoshop the website URL on your pictures.
March 6, 2008 — 1:59 pm
Thomas Johnson says:
@ Patrick: If ARMLS is Like HARMLS, that is a violation as well.
Greg: This is one of those things which foretells the possible collapse of the MLS system. I haven’t had the time or the inclination to pursue this with HAR, but I have this nagging suspicion that one should follow the money. What is the income stream that the MLS receives from all those IDX feeds, who pays for them and is it sufficient revenue to require listing brokers (the members) in violation of their fiduciary obligation to deliver inferior representation?
With HAR.com (the public facing side of HARMLS) catching a billion hits a month, and with my listings being repackaged so that they are more sell able to whom, I do not know (but I can guess), why do we even pay dues? Could it be that the MLS does not want our listings to possibly send listing traffic to our own sites?
I can imagine a world where a certain specialty broker that represents unique homes could withdraw his listings from the MLS, and coop buyer’s agents like he does now, only through other means like, perhaps, a little buyer registration form on each listing website, not unlike a builder registration where a buyer’s agent or the buyer could declare representation. If a couple of mega-brokers were to do the same, or if Realogy with 25% of the listings nationwide were to do it, the MLS as we know it would collapse.
A boutique broker could also withhold the good, clean well priced stuff from MLS offer it only through the in-house websites bringing us back to the world of pocket listings and dual agency (fully disclosed, of course, only where legal, consult your attorney and your mileage will vary, deemed reliable but not guaranteed).
Another benefit for listing brokers withdrawing from MLS, would be the ability to offer conditional cooperation which would give the listing broker control not only of his listing inventory, but of his potential liability vis a vis low/no service buyer’s agents. Kelman might not like that.
Or, the MLS could serve its members and allow the listing brokers to promote the client’s house in the most excellent way possible so that the public is served with a gorgeous array of listings.
March 6, 2008 — 3:17 pm
James Hsu says:
Our NWMLS here has similar rules. No URL’s in the public marketing comments section. Though we can put it in the agent only remarks section. I personally don’t agree with this policy regardless of why they do it. The mls does it to so buyers looking at listings are more likely to contact an agent for more info. The MLS has a limited capacity of what info can be shown and how many pictures. I want to be able to direct people to another location where I would have lots of other pictures…but as it is, …I’m dependent on the buyer’s agent to tell their client about other sites to get more pictures.
March 6, 2008 — 6:51 pm
Greg Swann says:
I’m with you. I detest dual agency. We argue against it even when buyers say that’s what they want. But I want to be able to market the home to its best advantage. It’s obscene to obstruct the buyer’s access to information.
March 6, 2008 — 6:54 pm
Russell Shaw says:
I love dual agency. I think it is great. Everyone should do it. A lot. I also think (and have written in response before) that the divorced commission idea is nothing short of retarded.
Now … the reason (and I too, find it awful that it is a rule) that there can be NO connection back to you, your website, your company, your phone number, etc on any of your listings, any photos or virtual tours is so other brokers using that information in an IDX feed can use your listing to capture any client inquiry. For example, we do virtual tours on all of our listings and have to have TWO versions. One is “branded” and the other is “unbranded”. The branded tours go to Realtor.com, all of my websites, etc. But they don’t go to ARMLS. Only the unbranded versions go to ARMLS. As far as I know, this would be true for ALL MLS systems in the U.S. who are following the NAR rules on this particular issue.
Any potential client using my IDX search, http://www.nohasslelisting.com/SearchtheMLS.html, who clicks on some listing from, say Re/Max, will not see any Re/Max contact info, but in light gray, near the bottom, “listing courtesy of Re/Max”. But all of the contact info is missing. Any buyer who really wanted to know who the listing agent was could find them if they really wanted to – they could just take the MLS number and go to AZCentral.com or Realtor.com and “search by MLS number”. Being able to use other agent’s listings as bait is a two-edged sword. It cuts both ways. If someone wanted to be a buyer’s agent and didn’t work for a broker who had listings or have any themselves would never be able to use IDX to capture a buyer(under the current system). The leads would always go to the listing agent.
March 6, 2008 — 9:55 pm
Greg Swann says:
Here’s the thing, and this is kinda-sorta a jazz riff on Ludwig von Mises, the economist who proved conclusively that Socialism could not possibly work.
In another context von Mises argued that a bad law would tend to cause unintended consequences that would result in the need for even worse laws. If this process went unchecked, the end consequence would always be full-blown totalitarianism.
You can see a practical example of this in our idiot phreelance-pharmaceutical laws, which have put more than 1 adult in 100 behind bars — more than 1 in 10 adult black males. What, exactly, is a police state again?
My point? Bad rules beget worse rules. The co-broke is broken. Because it is broken, and in preference to fixing it, we have to make even worse rules.
Do you think I can’t get around this one? Do you know the name of my brokerage, the legal, state-sanctified name? The name that is printed on every IDX version of every one of our (very few) listings?
It’s BloodhoundRealty.com.
Who can’t find me? Only very dumb people — and we sell mostly higher-priced properties.
The purpose of almost every law — and of every rule — is to forbid the proper functioning of the human mind. This is no fit activity for otherwise decent people — and it doesn’t work anyway.
March 7, 2008 — 12:48 am
Miss Marlow says:
I like to send my buyers the MLS links to new listings.
If the MLS listings also had links to the listing agent’s website, I would have to stop sending out those links.
I’m GLAD the rules prohibit listing agent contact information in the public remarks section of the listing.
March 7, 2008 — 12:57 am
Greg Swann says:
I’m not getting you, Marlow.
Who is it who thinks you bring no value to buyers? You — or the buyers?
If you’re delivering the goods, why would they stray?
March 7, 2008 — 1:01 am