I’m up to my elbows in Ajax (“You’re soaking in it!”), but I don’t want this to get washed away in the suds: With respect to Redfin’s assertion of propriety, Kevin Boer at In The Trenches (blogrolled) provides a plausible explanation for how Redfin might be so adept at identifying impropriety.
An idea has been bugging me, and I don’t know what to do about it. Realtors are too much identified with The Real Estate King, the cheesy, sleazy used car salesmen. But there is another image of the Realtor, one among those we used to call The Better Men — maybe stodgy, maybe stuffy, but a man of firm and fixed principles. Real estate 2.0 (come and get me!) might bring us greater efficiencies, but if it brings us even worse behavior — how is that a benefit? Zillow.com whispers the truth and shouts the lie. The listings aggregators steal content like bums in Grand Central Station mining the coin returns on pay-phones. And Redfin.com seemingly devotes its every living moment to making street criminals look like men of character. This is not an improvement.
If you think about this at all, please think carefully. I am up to my elbows in Ajax — with which I intend to cleanse Phoenix of every last greasy remnant of The Real Estate King. But we gain absolutely nothing if we remake our industry as a cabal of cheaper and more-efficient moral midgets. The realty.bots might be famous and they might have a lot of money behind them. But if they are our future, we might as well have changed nothing…
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